


inertia and other properties of matter

by skeilig



Series: It's Always Sunny in Derry [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: (only in the nightmare), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Deadlights (IT), Drama and Comedy, Dubious Consent, Erotic Nightmares, Frottage, Getting Together, Horror Elements, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Richie Tozier, Sharing a Bed, They own a bar together, Wet Dream, they all stayed in Derry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25747810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig/pseuds/skeilig
Summary: Twenty-seven years ago, after the Losers gained an intimate knowledge of the municipal sewer system, they sliced their palms and vowed to stay in Derry to protect it from evil, if the opportunity ever arose. They kept their promise.This time, when it starts happening again, the Losers have some experience beating demon alien clowns. But they have a few decades’ worth of personal history to grapple with first.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Bill Denbrough & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris
Series: It's Always Sunny in Derry [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980571
Comments: 90
Kudos: 308





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as my “It’s Always Sunny in Derry” AU but … It both is and isn’t that. I dunno. This is a weird sorta dark fic with horror elements, but also group bickering in a dive bar setting. Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dub-con warning for the sex nightmare which occurs in this chapter - more detailed/spoilery warning in end-note if you need that.

By the time weird shit starts happening in the bar, Mike actually seems relieved. At first it’s the taps, turning on by themselves. It takes the seven of them a while to notice because they’re huddled at the other end of the bar arguing about which one of them could, theoretically, get the most air off a ramp if they, theoretically, built one, and if they drove Bill’s motorcycle off of it. (And, furthermore, what the ideal incline of the ramp would be to maximize air; Ben has started scribbling triangles and equations on a damp, disintegrating bar napkin, and Richie and Eddie have started calling him a nerd and progressively meaner things.) 

Then Stan says, “Hey, Rich, you left the tap on. Dumbass.”

Richie, who’s the only one standing behind the bar, glances over his shoulder and groans. “I didn’t leave it on,” he says. He takes one big step to the side and reaches to flip off the misbehaving tap. It’s Busch Light. But it doesn’t move. He pulls on it again, and it doesn’t budge.

“Stop dicking around,” Bev says, “You’re wasting beer.”

“Well, he’s wasting _Busch_ ,” Eddie says wryly. Stan chuckles at this, but Bill mutters something malignant in response. 

“I’m not dicking around,” Richie insists, and he’s not. He’s pulling and pulling, and—nothing. Pale golden liquid still streams out and directly down the drain. 

At that moment, Mike’s eyes go wide and wild as he slams his palms on the bar top. “I told you! I fucking told you!” 

“Mike,” Stan starts wearily, but Bill begins to talk over him, “You did! You said the faucets in your house were doing this, right?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Mike says emphatically, “I told you, and no one believed me, fucking assholes.”

“To be fair,” Richie begins, and then cuts himself off with a grunt of effort. He has one foot on the back of the bar now, and he pulls on the goddamn Busch Light tap with his whole bodyweight. Still nothing. “To be fair, Mike, were you microdosing on any ‘roots’ at the time?” 

While Mike begins to sputter an unconvincing defense of his hallucinogenic habits, Eddie stands up from his barstool and marches around next to Richie. 

“Let me try,” Eddie demands, pulling at Richie’s arms.

“Nah, man, I got it.”

“You obviously don’t.” 

“And you think _you’re_ going to do better?” 

“Let me _try_ ,” Eddie says, his vocal pattern reverting back three decades as he shoves Richie away. 

Richie holds his ground for a few seconds, so that Eddie will shove him harder, and it works. It always works. Eddie puts his whole body into it, hip-checking Richie to the side. Richie laughs and stumbles a few steps back. 

Eddie begins to pull on the tap with the same level of efficacy as Richie’s attempts.

“Idiots,” Stan says as he thrusts his almost-empty beer stein under the stream. “At least save it.”

“Oh, that’s smart,” Richie says sincerely. He stands a step behind Eddie, where he’s still wrestling with the tap, watching his forearms flex and quickly looking away. 

Another minute and a few re-fills later, the keg runs dry, temporarily solving that problem. 

However, the respite from immediate problems only creates an opening for discussion of longer term ones. Mike launches into his ‘told you so’ rant, one that has been increasing in frequency and fervor of late. 

Twenty-seven years ago, after the Losers gained an intimate knowledge of the municipal sewer system, they sliced their palms and vowed to stay in Derry to protect it from evil, if the opportunity ever arose. It was a lofty ambition for a group of kids on the cusp of high school, but they kept their promise. Of course, there were other less noble tethers tying them each to Derry, but it was convenient to have a self-sacrificing excuse to never leave their hometown. 

Bev was almost whisked away in the wake of her father’s death, but she made such a fuss that her aunt moved to Derry instead of taking Bev to Portland. At first, it was meant to be a transitional arrangement, to soften the blow of moving away, but something happens when you enter Derry’s city limits that makes it hard to leave. 

Bill had his parents, who were hard to leave even though he wanted to, and Derry was the only town his brother had ever lived in. He also had Bev; they dated for a while during high school and after, and she had no intention of leaving. So, he went to school, and he wrote like a man possessed, and spent more time writing than editing or trying to sell manuscripts, so he never managed to publish much of anything. 

Stan had his parents and the synagogue, which itself was like an aging parent he felt obligated to care for. After graduation, he commuted to school for a while, and helped manage the finances. He dated the daughter of some family friends for a year, until he realized that he didn’t really like her that much and broke up with her, but still had to see her several times per week around town and at the synagogue. 

Ben lived with his mom until he bought a house and then she lived with him. He did his generals at the community college, and he’s been saving and studying for an architecture program for the better part of a decade. He also, Richie suspects, has stayed in town for Bev, but less successfully.

Not that Richie can judge. Eddie stayed because of his mom, and lived with her, too, after he graduated, until he got married. Now, he’s divorced and his mom is dead, and he lives with Richie, who’s stayed with him through it all, loving him unsuccessfully the whole time. Richie stayed in Derry because everyone else stayed, but especially because Eddie stayed. Richie has been in his orbit for three decades now, trapped close but never colliding. Richie forgot to make any other plans for his life that didn’t involve succumbing to Eddie’s gravitational pull. 

Mike had the farm and his uncle, and few prospects outside of that. When his uncle died, Mike sold the farm—he never liked it much anyway—and used the money to buy the old Falcon. The bar was an establishment of Derry, but the owner’s children had opted out of carrying on the legacy. Buying and running the bar together was a wild idea that Mike floated one night, while the seven of them were drinking at the old farm house that was now his. They stood in the tall grass of the lawn between the house and the barn, swatting at mosquitos and stacking empty cans, and the joke grew more and more serious. 

So, Mike bought the bar and one by one each of the Losers became involved in its maintenance and financially invested in its success—or at least in avoiding its abject failure. For the past ten or so years, this has been their biggest tether to Derry and to each other. 

Safeguarding the town was not a duty they’d considered in a while. At least, Richie hadn’t thought of it since he doesn’t much care whether or not the town burns. To him, it’s just a container for the things he actually cares about; in case of fire, he’ll grab those things and flee without a backward glance. But his friends have always been brave and stupid and loyal, and they won’t allow Richie to throw them in the trunk of his shitty Dodge and drive them outside city limits, so Richie’s pretty much stuck here as the flames start to rise around him. 

He’s been resigned to that, like a death row inmate, really since the New Year, when Ben pointed out that they’re coming up on twenty-seven years since they made their blood oath. If the cycle was going to continue, it would happen this year. 

Everyone knew this, but no one prepared for it as a real possibility—except Mike and maybe Richie in his own fatalistic way—so when things started to happen it was a fight all over again. The thing is, Derry has always had a higher crime rate, even in the calm between storms, so it was hard to tell if a particular disappearance was part of the general background radiation of violent tragedy that permeated the town, or if it indicated something bigger. 

It ramped up gradually enough to evade detection, as winter turned slowly to the gray sludge of spring and then the full bloom of summer. Mike kept an ear on the police scanner, and his apartment became a mess of newspaper clippings and maps. Bill was swayed pretty quickly, and Beverly was always ready to believe something that broke up the monotony of everyday life and gave her a purpose. (Or, less charitably, something for her to yell at the boys for not caring enough about, not doing enough.) Ben began keeping track of the disappearances, and comparing them to the previous cycles, as far back as he could obtain the crime records, looking for some ‘statistically significant’ difference. Stan and Eddie seem equally determined to not think about it at all; they both get very distressed whenever the topic is brought up. Richie, for now, makes himself useful by playing devil’s advocate to Mike and Bill, because arguing keeps Eddie on the loud and angry end of the distress spectrum, and keeps him from going quiet and fumbling for his inhaler. (Eddie started using an inhaler again after he was divorced; all his progress is two steps forward, one step back. Or maybe it was something that let him feel like himself. Richie hasn’t talked to him about it.)

“I can’t talk about this anymore,” Stan says once Mike has pulled out his to-go version of his conspiracy wall of newspaper clippings. It’s a leather-bound notebook stuffed with worn scraps of paper and littered with messy notes. 

“It’s happening whether we talk about it or not,” Mike says firmly, flipping to his ‘Unexplained Events’ timeline to jot down this particular incident. 

“What’s so weird about faulty faucets?” Richie wonders aloud. “I mean, this bar is a shit hole, we all know that. Everything’s falling apart.”

“Children can go missing,” Bill says solemnly, “and that can be explained in other ways, but–”

“Oh, but not a faucet turning on?” Richie laughs loudly, viciously. Beside him, he sees Eddie’s posture straighten, growing a little braver by way of absorbing Richie’s brashness. “There’s no other possible explanation for that?”

“You know what he means, Richie,” Bev says, shooting him a look. 

“Not really,” Richie says, and he turns to look at Eddie, who now has his arms crossed, standing next to him. “Do you know what he means?”

Eddie shakes his head, chest puffed out and chin lifted in an obvious challenge. It’s a little distractingly endearing, reminds Richie of all the times when Eddie would take his side as kids. For all of Eddie’s whining and general consternation directed at Richie, if there was ever a real conflict in the group, he always took Richie’s side, standing behind him and nodding. It only made Richie want to argue more. 

Now, Richie tears his gaze off Eddie and returns it to Beverly and Bill, sitting across the bar from them. “Well, there you have it. This is stupid. Let’s keep watching the disappearances, or whatever, but this whole ‘unexplained events’ thing is—no offense—really fucking stupid. Are you guys, like, eight? Getting freaked out about leaky faucets?” 

Before anyone can argue, the offending Busch Light tap snaps back into its upright position. Everyone jumps slightly, staring at it warily for a long second, before looking back to each other. 

After a beat of silence, everyone simultaneously explodes into another argument. 

The week carries on, with the regular doldrums of arguing about who’s closing each night and who should have remembered to order more receipt paper, and the type of stuff they really should have systemized by now. But they never have because owning a bar with your friends is supposed to be fun; it’s not supposed to feel like a job. Stan probably wants to wring all their necks, since he’s ultimately responsible for the bookkeeping, if only by a sense of moral obligation, but he exhibits tremendous restraint. Plus, none of them really sees themself as the leader of this venture. Mike bought the place, so in Richie’s opinion, it’s his deal; but Mike never wanted that and has always deferred to the others’ judgment in major decision-making. Bill had spent too long serving as the Losers Club’s de facto leader and seems completely unwilling to take that role again. Stan and Beverly both like to lecture everyone now and again, but they get flighty about taking on too much actual responsibility. 

All this to say, no one’s in charge and nothing ever gets done. It’s a fucking mess. A few months back, in the midst of a particularly spirited debate about proper lime-slicing technique, Eddie’d grumbled, mostly to himself, “This is why democracies are doomed to fail.” Richie had barked a loud laugh at that and said, “Holy shit, Eds. Are you a closet fascist?” and then immediately regretted his use of the word ‘closet.’ It felt like hanging a flashing neon sign over his own head. But no one paid any mind to his turn of phrase, instead immediately rounding on Eddie for his authoritarian tendencies until Eddie snapped at them about how a workplace needs a ‘clearly delineated hierarchy’ which really did not help his case. For the rest of the week, everyone called him ‘your highness’ and ‘great leader’ and bowed or saluted when he walked past.

That’s basically how all their arguments go. They get distracted giving each other shit and never return to the actual issue at hand. 

That’s how the conversation goes about the ‘unexplained events,’ too. Mike keeps bringing up something about a vision quest or sweat lodge or whatever, and Richie says something like “Okay, Burning Man wannabe motherfucker,” which usually gets a laugh from at least half the room. They don’t make a lot of progress, and there are other things to deal with. 

Such as Canal Days, and the fact that Bill forgot to submit their vendor license on time, so for the first time in eight years, they’re not going to be able to run their beer tent on the festival grounds. This is a major blow in terms of cash—they usually rake in the equivalent of a month and half’s worth of profit in a week—and the fact that it was Bill who dropped the ball seems to have everyone even more vitriolic. He’s getting as defensive and ornery as he always does when he fucks up and won’t admit it. 

“We can find another way to make up the money,” Bill insists, his shoulders tense and up to his ears. He’s sitting at the bar, a half-full pint glass in front of him, foam clinging to the rim. 

“Like what? Pack up for Lobster Fest in Rockland?” Bev says, but it’s obvious from her tone that it’s not an actual suggestion. 

“I-I don’t know,” Bill says shortly, stammering a little. “I don’t fucking know. You guys always have all the ideas. Fff-fucking think of something.” 

Richie knows Bill well enough to know that, one, when he swears this much it means he’s angry, and, two, when he stutters while he’s swearing, he’s basically apoplectic. 

“Coupons?” Eddie ventures weakly. 

“Oh, yeah, _coupons_ ,” Richie repeats, rolling his eyes.

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says crisply. “Like, we could still get some of the festival crowd. Get them to come back here at the end of the night, you know? Or, they only sell beer inside. Come to the Clubhouse for something stronger, yeah?” 

“Get away from your kids for a second,” Stan says, mostly to himself, and then laughs, also to himself.

“That’s actually a good idea,” Mike says diplomatically, and Eddie says, “Fucking _thank you_.” 

“Okay, okay,” Richie says, “So, how do we distribute the coupons? We take shifts handing them out at the festival? Do we need to dress up in a costume or something?” 

“Yeah, a beaver suit,” pipes up one of the only two customers in the bar at the moment. 

Richie, and the rest of the Losers, turn to him in mild confusion, having forgotten that they weren’t alone. It’s Adrian, along with his boyfriend, a Derry native, Don. They’re in their early thirties, if Richie had to guess, and they’ve achieved semi-regular status at the bar over the few months of summer. Because of that, Richie’s privy to some of their story. Don’s a freelance journalist who lives in New York, but he’s back in town to tie up some loose ends—sell the house he inherited but doesn’t want—after his grandmother’s death. Adrian, accompanying him, seems charmed by small town life, more or less ironically depending on the day. 

“What’s with the beaver fixation, anyway?” Adrian asks. Don chuckles a little, rolling his eyes. This is clearly an ongoing bit between the two of them. 

“Derry used to be a beaver trapping town,” Ben answers earnestly, before reflexively flinching in anticipation of Richie’s usual joke.

But Richie doesn’t take the bait, tempting as it is. 

Adrian and Don’s presence over the summer has left Richie feeling nervous and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t really felt since middle school. When they first started coming into the bar, he worried he looked at them too often, stared at their hands brushing against each other on the bar top, and then he overcorrected and barely looked at them at all. It was like he had totally forgotten how to be a normal person in their presence. He found himself monitoring eye contact, something he never does—except, sometimes, when talking to Eddie, on particularly bad days—reminding himself: look them in the eye; now look away; look at them again; and so on. 

None of the Losers ever said anything about Adrian and Don. Never a single comment to acknowledge their sexuality or relationship to each other. This was in some way a huge relief to Richie, because he didn’t have to fumble through a response, but it also meant he didn’t get a test run for how a more personal version of that conversation might go. If he ever gets there. And honestly, with how things are going, he might die first. 

“Is that, like,” Adrian says, cocking his head to one side, “enough to support an entire town? Like, they were just trapping beavers all day? What did they do with the beavers? Eat them?”

Richie still doesn’t take the joke, which probably has his friends worried about his wellbeing, but he just can’t bring himself to.

The joke is self-evident, anyway. Don snorts a reluctant laugh, and Ben begins explaining fur trapping to a willfully ignorant Adrian (“Why didn’t they wear… polyester?”). 

Richie is considering jumping in and explaining to Ben that he’s being had, but… he can appreciate the art of playing dumb in order to coax him into earnest lecturing. It’s one of Richie and Bev’s favorite hobbies. Once, they got Ben to believe that neither of them knew why the ocean was saltwater; the resulting geology lesson lasted almost an hour before Bev lost her poker face and cracked up. 

While Ben starts in on a tangent about the use of mercury in curing felt, and the origin of the term ‘Mad Hatter,’ Eddie’s phone rings. He answers with that old-man-esque, “Yello?” that always makes Richie snicker. He listens, then says a couple curt Yes’s and Thank you’s and hangs up. “Richie, that was Keene’s,” he says, his eyebrows making a meaningful micro-expression. 

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Richie says, nodding rapidly. “I’ll head over there.” 

“Well, you don’t have to go _right_ now,” Eddie says. “We were talking about the– the– Canal Days thing–”

“No, I’ll go,” Richie says, flashing him a smile. He’s happy to escape. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Adrian absently toying with the cuff of Don’s sleeve. Richie grabs his leather coat off the bar stool—he doesn’t need it in the summer heat, but he feels naked walking around without his hands stuffed into pockets—and hurries off down Main Street toward the pharmacy. 

Downtown Derry is in the full swing of festival prep now. A guy on a hydraulic lift is switching out the lamppost banners from the usual Town of Derry ones to the brighter, snazzier Canal Days fair. Shopkeepers are preparing their window signs and stocking their wares. The park by the canal is fenced off, and Richie can see the scaffolding of a half-constructed Tilt-a-Whirl as he passes. 

At Keene’s, Richie ducks inside and heads straight to the register at the back. He sees Mr. Keene behind the counter, bumbling about, moving as slowly as always. He looks like he’s about to turn to dust. He squints at Richie for a moment, before he bellows, “Greta!” 

As soon as she steps out from the backroom, Richie grins. He loves this part. 

Greta’s chewing gum as always, her hair still 80s permed in 2016. She steps up to the counter and gives Richie a withering look. “Name?” she asks, like she doesn’t know.

“Richard Tozier,” Richie says, bubbling with joy. There’s something about Greta Keene despising him that gives him such a rush. “Picking up a prescription for Edward Kaspbrak.”

She looks at him for a moment then turns to click around on the computer for an absurdly long time. Richie taps his fingernails on the counter, humming along with the Muzak that emanates from the walls. 

“ID?” she asks flatly, not looking away from her computer.

“Oh, right,” Richie says, fumbling for his wallet. 

The thing is, she asks every time—every single time!—and every time, Richie pretends to be surprised, as if it’s the first time. It’s this amazing passive-aggressive dance and it’s consistently the best part of Richie’s month. He slides his driver’s license across the counter and she picks it up and scowls at it, then looks at Richie. 

Richie grins at her, matching the dopey expression on his nearly ten-year-old photo. 

Greta slides his ID back across the counter. Then she disappears to the backroom for another several minutes. Richie spins the carousel of cheap sunglasses sitting beside the register, catching glimpses of his unflattering funhouse-mirror reflection in the curved lenses. When she finally comes back with the prescription bag, she drops it on the counter and leaves again without another word. 

“Thank you!” Richie calls brightly after her. “I’ll say hi to Eddie for you!”

He turns to leave, a spring in his step. 

Greta had always been a terror, especially to Bev, but Eddie received his fair share of middle-school nastiness, too. Then, later in high school, Greta had asked Eddie to a dance. Or, rather, she’d demanded that he ask her to the dance. She was a senior and he was a sophomore, and Eddie caved to the pressure. They went to the Homecoming dance together, and they hung out for a while afterward, and then drifted apart once she graduated. Nothing as dramatic as ‘broke up’ because they had barely dated, really. Just hung out after school a couple times. They may have gone to one movie. She may have been Eddie’s first kiss, but Richie has never been able to extract this information from Eddie. He figures it must be an excruciatingly embarrassing story. 

Then after graduation, when Eddie was floundering and listless, he got a job at the pharmacy while he studied, doing his generals at the community college. He then decided he wanted to become a pharmacist himself. It was good, stable work, well-paid. (Mr. Keene had been a begrudgingly trusted adult to Eddie, despite his general creepiness, since he was the one who eventually told Eddie the truth about his asthma.) And Greta had changed, sort of. She wasn’t necessarily nicer, but she was less aggressively nasty. And she actually offered an apology for some of her middle school behavior, albeit a ten-year-late one. 

She redirected some of her aggression into defending Eddie instead of attacking him. She was particularly antagonistic toward Eddie’s mother, which was probably enough to win a twenty-year-old Eddie’s affection on its own (not that Richie hadn’t tried the same tactic, less successfully). And she was always encouraging him, even if it was in a way that Richie thought was sort of controlling. She pushed him toward pharmacy school, saying that he was smarter than half the people in her program. She pushed him to buy his own car and then to move out of his mother’s home. When he got his own car, at age twenty, Eddie asked her on a date. When he moved away from home, at age twenty-two, he moved in with Greta. 

Greta seemed to think their history together was funny and cute. Eddie insisted that it was long ago and she had changed. Once, Richie pointed out that the fact that she thought her bullying him was a cute story to tell others was indicative of the fact that she had not changed at all. Eddie got upset and sputtery, and said that all kids do stupid, mean shit, and Richie is the last person Eddie would trust to make judgements on what constitutes bullying. 

Granted, Bev fucking hated her. Bev didn’t go to the wedding. This really upset Eddie, and splintered their friendship for a while. Richie did go to the wedding, and, well. He had been able to fool himself, for a while, into thinking that he didn’t really have feelings for Eddie. Or at least, he didn’t have them anymore. It had been ten years since he carved their initials into the kissing bridge. But, god, there was something about sitting in a pew in the stuffy Episcopal church, seeing Eddie in his tux and his nervous smile, that made Richie feel like he was going to pass out. He doesn’t remember much of the wedding anymore, blessedly. Maybe he could recall some details, if he tried, but even nearly twenty years on, when he thinks of it, it feels like touching a hot pan. He jerks back before the pain even registers. 

After the wedding—he left the reception early—Richie made probably one of the most humiliating decisions of his life; he called Bev, invited himself over to her tiny apartment, and told her he loved her. 

Well, he kissed her first. They had been listening to music and singing, goofing around and shit-talking Greta, passing a bottle of cheap white wine back and forth. Then, lying on the floor, Richie rolled over and kissed her. And she was okay with that part of it. She wound a hand into Richie’s hair, that was the same length as hers and shaggy around his ears, and kissed him back. She’d broken up with Bill only a month prior, and she took Richie’s face firmly in her small, warm hands and said, “You can’t tell anyone about this,” and then kissed him again. 

He nodded, his nose bumping into hers. “Sure,” he mumbled against her lips. Soon they were half undressed, Richie sprawled out on her messy single bed, littered with Bev’s clothing. His glasses were still on, but his shirt was unbuttoned and his fly undone, Bev in his lap, her bra thrown across the room, and her short skirt riding up her thighs. Richie’s hands trembled on her hips and he said, “Bev, I think I love you.” 

This effectively derailed the evening. Her delicate brow wrinkled and she withdrew her hand from inside Richie’s boxers. She sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from him, silent for a while. Richie zipped and buttoned himself back up, his erection fading with staggering efficiency. 

“Richie,” Bev finally said. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She looked really thin like that, the ribs curving toward her spine showing through her pale skin. “I’m sorry, I’m not really looking for anything serious right now. I didn’t think you were, either.” 

“I think we’d be good together,” Richie said, sort of desperately, already having humiliated himself. Why try to gracefully back out now?

Looking back, it’s excruciatingly obvious what Richie was trying to do. But the thing was, at the time, Richie really meant it. Richie was good at tricking himself into believing things. So when he went home and cried violently into his pillow until he wore himself out and eventually fell asleep, he thought he was heartbroken over Bev’s rejection. But seeing Bev after that didn’t carry any real, bone-deep pain with it, just the surface sting of humiliation. Seeing Eddie, on the other hand, left his skin flushed and shivery, his chest aching like his ribcage had been cracked open and stapled back together. He could hardly look him in the eye. 

Richie and Eddie used to get in a lot of fights about Greta. Just thinking about her, let alone seeing her or having to speak to her, sent Richie into a blinding rage, white-hot and vibrating under his skin. He would call her a bitch a lot, not to her face—or if he did, he would thinly disguise it as a joke—and this led to about a month when they were twenty-three when Eddie didn’t speak to Richie at all. Richie would go into the pharmacy even though he didn’t have any prescriptions—he would end up buying condoms he didn’t really need in some pathetic display—just to see Eddie and inevitably make an ass of himself. Eddie would pointedly disappear to the backroom, leaving him to deal with Greta or Mr. Keene. There was talk, sometimes, of the pharmacy being named Keene and Kaspbrak’s someday. Greta had not taken his last name. 

The thing was, Eddie was miserable from the beginning. But Richie didn’t allow himself to see that because he was trying his hardest to move on. So he put his head down and marched to the beat of: Eddie is married. Eddie is married to a woman. Eddie is happily married to a woman. And he didn’t allow himself to notice any evidence to the contrary. 

But Greta did actually love Eddie, Richie was pretty sure of that all along. He couldn’t imagine anyone not loving Eddie, especially if they got to have him up close. It would hurt worse to imagine that she didn’t love him. She would often drink too much and then hang off his shoulders, her head resting against him. It was a clinginess and comfort that didn’t seem fake, at least not on her end. She wanted to be close to him. Eddie was a little stiff and awkward, but only ever in front of Richie. That’s the only way Richie ever saw them, obviously, when Eddie knew Richie was watching them. So he didn’t read into that. Eddie never seemed the PDA type after all. In private, he was probably very doting. Richie could imagine it. 

(And god he tried not to, but trying not to think of things only made him think about them more. This extended to wondering, in a frequent exercise of self-cruelty, what they were like in bed. The intrusive image was usually missionary position, unless he was feeling particularly vicious, dark and non-specific. Eddie bent over her, his ass taking a prominent position in Richie’s imagination, naturally. Richie had jerked off to the idea of Eddie and Greta fucking exactly once, and it was the most unsatisfying orgasm he’d ever had. It was incriminatingly quick and ripped from him, tinged with guilt and jealousy, wriggling slick and slimy in his guts. But, god, the idea of Eddie fucking _anyone_ seemed to set Richie off in a way that was hard to ignore. It was sort of difficult to imagine Eddie fucking period, because he had never expressed sexual desires in as long as Richie had known him—and he’d had plenty opportunity to, Richie’d made sure of it, grilling him about crushes until his cheeks turned pink since elementary school—but this made it all the more tempting and rewarding to do so. Envisioning the small ways his control might slip, the little sounds he might make.) 

When they finally split up, it was an enormous, guilty relief to Richie, even though Eddie was pretty miserable about the whole thing. He thought he must be defective, unworthy of love; Richie tried to rebut that ridiculous and frankly offensive claim without showing his hand. And… things got complicated. Now they live together. They don’t talk about it, and Richie doesn’t really think about it.

Back at the bar, Richie is relieved to find Adrian and Don are gone, leaving a couple crumpled dollar bills in their wake. Richie tosses the stapled prescription bag at Eddie—he’s not paying attention, so he fumbles to catch it and then scolds Richie when it falls to the floor—and says, “Your wife said you’re late on alimony again.”

“Ex-wife,” Eddie corrects, grumbling. He’s sitting at one of the booths across from Bev, each of them drinking a beer. He’s got a pen and a stack of bar napkins in place of paper, where he’s evidently brainstorming slogans for their coupon. He points the pen at Richie, scowling. “And, seriously, Richie, you make that joke every time. Well, ‘joke.’” He makes exaggerated air quotes before tearing into the paper bag to scrutinize his prescription. He gives the inhaler a perfunctory rattle and pockets it. “It’s not funny.”

“And you get mad at me every time,” Richie says, flopping down on the bench seat next to Eddie and reveling in his predictable response: he tries to shove Richie out of the booth, to no avail. Richie plants his feet on the floor and elbows on the table and doesn’t budge an inch, smiling at Bev from across the table. 

“It’s true, Eddie,” she says, unmoved, and takes a swig of her beer. “It just encourages him.” 

“Oh, great,” Eddie huffs, still shoving against Richie’s unyielding body. The result is that they’re pressed up against each other from shoulder to hip to thigh. Richie tries not to smile too wide. “So it’s my fault.”

“It kind of is,” Bev says with a shrug. She gets up from the booth and crosses the bar, with her slow, casual, hip-swaying walk, apparently not interested in their antics. She settles on the barstool instead, leaning against the counter, to chat with Ben.

The lack of an immediate audience leaves their closeness with a bitter aftertaste. Richie slides out of the seat to sit across from Eddie, but– he steals a taste of his beer as he does. It’s a give and take, a series of bluffs and folds. Eddie makes a gratifyingly annoyed face, his mouth all pinched. But when he snatches the bottle back from Richie, he takes a drink himself, putting his mouth where Richie’s was without even wiping it off first. Richie’s pulse jumps. 

Stan calls, from where he’s drying glasses behind the bar, “Richie are you closing tonight?”

“No, I did last night,” he replies. 

“No, I closed last night,” Ben says. He looks worryingly at Stan for backup. “I can’t close again tonight.”

Richie scoffs. “What, Haystack, hot date?” 

Ben goes predictably pink and also, predictably, says, “No, but I’ve been here since ten.” 

“Okay, fine,” Bev cuts in, holding her hands over her ears as if she’s in the company of screaming toddlers. Not far off. “Ben, you’re not closing. Relax. Richie, you’re on the calendar for tonight.”

“What calendar?” Richie asks indignantly. “We don’t have a calendar.”

“Yes, we do!” Stan insists. He sets the glass he was drying down on the counter with enough force that Richie’s surprised it doesn’t crack, and waves Richie over with a sharp gesture. 

At that point, Eddie gets up and disappears to the bathroom, so he misses the whole show Richie puts on of squintingly staring at their schedule, marked in color-coded chunks on a touristy wall calendar (‘The Lighthouses of Maine’), and pretending like he’s never seen it before. Now that he’s looking at it, he does remember Stan shoving this calendar under his nose once or twice before but his only reaction then had been to nod blearily and say, “Yeah, yeah,” until Stan left him alone. 

“Am I red?” Richie asks of the color-coding system, lifting his glasses to peer under them. 

“No, you’re yellow.” 

“What? Why?”

“ _Why?_ ”

Before Stan can launch into whatever exciting tirade’s clearly building, there’s a clatter and a shout from the men’s bathroom. Eddie’s voice follows, forming words more clearly: “Guys! Hey, guys!”

They all run after him in a second. Stan and Richie and Bev calling a temporary truce on the calendar issue, Ben abandoning his post behind the bar, Mike and Bill leaping to their feet from where they had been sitting across the bar, searching online for an express printer for the coupons and, possibly, a beaver suit. 

Inside, Eddie stands with his back to the wall next to the urinals, his hands raised defensively in front of his chest, eyes wild. He faces one of the stalls, the door swung open. When the rest of the Losers walk in and all start asking him what’s wrong and if he’s okay, he just nods toward the open stall. 

“Oh, shit,” Bev says, jumping back a little, since she’s the first one who sees it. 

Richie crowds his way in closer until he can see inside. Then he jumps back, too, because there’s a large red balloon growing out of the toilet bowl. 

“What the fuck?” Richie blurts, colliding with Bill’s weirdly bony chest as he stumbles backward. 

“I know,” Eddie spits, gesturing wildly. “What the fuck, right?”

The balloon is– maybe glowing. Or at least reflecting reddish light onto the graffitied, gray-green stall walls. It’s also– maybe growing. Ever so slightly expanding, the shiny latex stretch getting paler. The muffin-top-like bulge over the edge of the toilet seat getting fatter. 

“I swear to god,” Eddie continues, slicing at the air with one hand, “if any of you did this, if you’re fucking with me, Richie, if you’re fucking with me, I will fucking kill you–” 

“No, it wasn’t me,” Richie says, his voice high-pitched and earnest. “I wouldn’t do that, I swear.”

“It’s not a prank,” Bill says, deathly serious. “It’s back.” 

There’s a moment of horrible silence before Stan says, “Do _not_ fucking say that,” and Mike says, “Not saying it doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” and everything is loud again. It feels better that way, when they’re all shouting over each other. Richie doesn’t have to think, he can just react, punching out from his chest. 

However, the commotion only lasts a few seconds before– the balloon pops, with a deafening, reverberating crack. Everyone jumps and yelps, grabbing at each other’s arms. Richie grabs Eddie’s arms, angling his body in front of him. Pathetic, he realizes after a moment, and lets go. 

Bev is the first one brave enough to lean forward and check. There’s nothing in the toilet bowl, not even a scrap of red from the balloon. 

It’s much later, after everyone else has cleared out, that Richie closes up early for the night. There are no patrons anyway, and he spent the last forty-five minutes alone, jumping at his own shadow and standing with his back to the wall so he could see everything at once. The seven of them had obviously abandoned their coupon scheme in favor of discussing how to avoid fucking dying. This is always a contentious topic with them. Bill was ready to go to Neibolt tonight, which seemed like a really good way to ensure their deaths. Stan was clinging to increasingly thin rationalizations. Mike wanted a few more days to prepare, and to ‘do things right.’ Richie figures it might be just as predestined as it was last time around. Things were set in motion long ago, there are no brakes or switches to throw, only inertia. 

When Eddie went home, he looked at Richie with real concern and asked if he was going to be okay by himself. That gave Richie no choice but to scoff and say, “Yeah, ‘course.” 

He stuck it out as long as he could. 

Now, he takes out the trash and climbs the stairs from the alley to his and Eddie’s apartment above the bar. The streets of downtown Derry are quiet as always at this time of night. A streetlamp on the corner by the pharmacy flickers, casting unsteady shadows. It could be eerie if it wasn’t Derry; this is just the way it’s always been. Richie knows these streets, and they can’t scare him anymore. Or so he tells himself. 

The stairs creak as he climbs, and at the top he finds the door unlocked. Inside, Eddie sits on the couch, his feet pulled up off the floor. The light from the TV illuminates his face. He stares wide-eyed at Richie as he steps inside, flips the deadbolt and then hangs the chain lock. 

“What’s up?” Richie asks rhetorically, just to fill the weird, charged silence. He ducks into the adjoined kitchen to grab a beer from the fridge and pops the cap on the wall-mounted bottle opener on his way back to the living room. 

Eddie’s eyes follow him all the while. He’s uncharacteristically quiet, sitting there in his pajamas: an old pair of athletic shorts with worn-out mesh and a missing drawstring, and a boring graphic t with weird proportions, both too wide and too short for his narrow frame. 

Richie wonders how long he’s been sitting here, in this exact spot, all alone. Letting what happened in the bar fester into anxiety. Leaving the door unlocked because that’s what he usually does when Richie stays at the bar downstairs, but it must have felt different now. Like a real choice, to say: this is normal. There’s nothing to worry about. 

Eddie asks, “What if it is happening again? What are we gonna do?”

“Honestly?” Richie says, projecting confidence, as he glances at Eddie and then to the TV. Eddie is watching the Great British Bake-Off, he realizes with confusion and affection. “I say we get the hell out of dodge. At the first sign of real trouble. Alright?” He flops down on the couch next to Eddie, purposefully jostling the cushions and knocking their knees together, so that Eddie will roll his eyes and shift away. 

“Well,” Eddie says, returning his feet to the floor as he moves over on the couch. “The first signs of trouble were a few months ago. And no one else is going to leave. Maybe Stan, but…” He trails off, chewing his lip. 

Richie doesn’t say anything. He knows basically what Eddie is saying: There’s no way they’re leaving, not now. They’re going to see this all the way through. 

Eddie unpauses the wholesome baking show, and they watch the rest of it in silence. Then Eddie announces that he’s going to bed. He double-checks the locks on the door and then trudges down the hallway to his bedroom. In another few minutes, Richie finishes his beer and goes to bed himself. 

When he passes Eddie’s door, he pauses outside of it for a moment, as he always does, holding his breath and listening. He hears nothing. In his own bedroom, he strips off his jeans and falls into bed in the briefs and t-shirt he wore all day. 

While he tosses and turns, kicking the sheets off of his legs, he thinks about Mike’s notebook full of names and dates, and Ben’s statistical significance, and Bev fighting to stay in this town all those years ago, when she could have left. He thinks about the fire in Bill’s eyes, his ‘the buck stops with me’ attitude that takes very little to ignite, and is impossible to extinguish once he gets going. And he thinks about Eddie, flanking Richie at the bar, taking his side on every issue that ever really mattered, asking Richie _what if… what are we gonna do?_ They were always a pair within their larger group, Richie and Eddie, a couple of electrons locked into orbit. 

Richie decides that, no matter what happens this time, he has to keep Eddie safe. That’s his role here. 

When Richie wakes up, he does so slowly, and it’s still dark. He doesn’t know whether or not his eyes are open. He blinks a few times, but it’s pitch black. He feels sort of weighted down to the bed, and for a moment he worries he’s in sleep paralysis. He’s never had sleep paralysis before, but he’s always been afraid of it, afraid of what his idle mind might conjure up. His mind has never passed on an opportunity to torture him. But he feels like he’s awake. 

Then he feels… heat on his face and chest. That’s the first thing. It’s this sort of warm weight pressing down but not quite touching him. He hears, maybe, breathing. He blinks a few times. It’s still so dark. 

“Eddie?” Richie whispers. He doesn’t dare move, but he doesn’t think he’s alone in his bedroom.

Then he feels the mattress shift under him, as if there’s someone, something else moving on top of it. His stomach swoops. He can’t see anything. 

“Eddie?” he whispers again, and then there’s breath on his face and he’s being kissed. 

Richie’s mouth and eyes are still open, but lips are moving against his, warm and dry, soft exhales spreading over his cheeks. No other part of his body is being touched, there’s no weight across his lap or chest, just a vaguely warm pressure against every inch of skin. 

“Richie,” Eddie sighs against his lips, pulling back. 

Richie’s sure that it’s him as soon as he hears his voice. His heart is pounding in his throat. He swallows and tries to bring his hands up to touch him, but he can’t move his arms. Maybe he is in sleep paralysis after all. 

His eyes finally adjust. Eddie stands beside the bed, peering down at him, an unfamiliar and thrilling angle. He’s wearing– not his pajamas. He’s dressed like he used to when he worked at Mr. Keene’s pharmacy, which is odd, but Richie doesn’t think much of it. White lab coat, slicked back hair. He’s smiling at him, but it’s a little cold and strange. 

Richie shivers and realizes, with a start, that he’s completely naked. His sheets are gone, and he’s spread out on his back, wearing neither the t-shirt nor briefs he’s pretty sure he fell asleep in. He tries to move his arms again, tugging his wrists, before realizing they’re tied above his head. His ankles, too, spread to either corner of the bed and tied down. 

His throat constricts in the first brush of panic even as his dick twitches against his thigh.

Eddie is still peering down at him with that odd, blank smile. “I see the way you look at me, Richie,” he says, voice silky smooth but simmering with venom. “How you’re always watching me, ever since we were kids.”

Richie’s breathing hard, his chest heaving. His shoulders ache, arms stretched uncomfortably over his head. He tries to say Eddie’s name, but his voice catches in his dry throat. Eddie reaches slowly toward him, one hand extended. His fingers are white and curled like talons. Richie twists away, but he can’t move far enough, still restrained; Eddie runs a finger down his exposed side, slowly from his armpit to his hip, the touch ticklish and tortuously light. Richie feels a sob building in his throat, wet and hot, but he grits his teeth against it. 

When Eddie pulls back, Richie lets his breath out in a desperate, relieved rush. He can feel his own pulse hammering under his jaw and in his dick, steadily filling out against his thigh, exposed to the cold air of his room. 

“You’re so pathetic,” Eddie says, without much heat. He sounds sad. “Waiting for me all these years. What do you think it’s gonna take, Richie? You think one day when all my options run out I’m gonna settle for you? Is that what you’re waiting around for?” He laughs, one sharp bark. It rings in Richie’s ears, making him flinch. Eddie says quietly, almost to himself, “I should never have let you touch me.”

Richie feels hysterical; he squeezes his eyes shut, considering the possibility that he’s having a particularly vivid dream, but still unable to disconnect from the raw, choking emotion of the moment, the abject humiliation. Sweat dries on his skin, leaving him cold and clammy, blood rushing hot and sticky through his veins. He can neither escape nor hide, lying there totally prone for Eddie to look at with a stomach-turning mix of disinterest and disdain. 

“And look at you now,” Eddie continues, clicking his tongue ruefully. “Even now. You’re hard just from me looking at you, dripping all over, making a mess on your stomach.” 

“Please,” Richie whines, his voice finally tearing from his throat. His hips are twitching, thighs shaking. Tears slip from his eyes, burning his cheeks. 

“Please, what? What, Richie? What do you want? Do you want me to stop? Do you want me to…” Eddie brings his hand to hover over Richie’s cock, so hard it’s red and painful, leaking a bead of pre-come onto Richie’s stomach, where it clings to his dark hair, glistening. Richie sobs, shaking his head against the mattress and trying to jerk his hips up, imagining he can feel the heat of Eddie’s hand, but he can’t reach it. Eddie smiles cruelly and draws his hand away. “I’m not gonna touch you, Richie. I’m never going to touch you. But that doesn’t even matter, does it? You’ve waited this long, and you’ll die waiting. You’ll be happy living in the same apartment as me, smelling my clothes when I’m not here, using my shampoo and jerking off in the shower– you can do this forever, huh?” 

Richie’s panting, his teeth bared, looking up at Eddie and down at himself, his own overexposed body. In his shifting gaze, he catches sight of a shadowed figure lurking at the foot of the bed. His heart jumps in his throat, and he bucks against the ankle restraints, feeling the full-throttled panic before he even processes what he sees. 

It’s the top of a head, pale cracked forehead and orange pom-pom tufts of hair. The yellow eyes are visible just above the edge of the mattress, gleaming. 

Richie kicks wildly, trying to scramble his way up the mattress to no avail. “What the fuck is that?” he demands, his voice fear-pitched and wobbly. “What is that?”

In the middle of his panicked thrashing, as if shocked over the edge, he comes, his dick pulsing and wet heat flooding around his stomach, into his pubes. He knows he makes a wounded sound when it happens, a whine deep in his throat, vibrating low in his chest. He sobs once or twice with the force of it, with fear and pleasure, his chest heaving. 

And that’s when he actually wakes up, to real Eddie, battling his flailing limbs. 

“Holy shit, Richie, fucking relax,” Eddie hisses at him. His hands are hot around his forearms, a vice-tight grip, pinning them to the mattress. “What the fuck’s the matter?” 

Richie becomes aware of his actual surroundings all at once; the fear and humiliation doesn’t evaporate, but it mutates, spurring him into action. He shifts around on the bed, crossing his legs, hoping to god that the darkness will conceal the wet mess in his underwear, as well as his erection as it starts to flag. The covers have slipped off the bed onto the floor. Eddie’s holding him down, kneeling on the mattress next to him. They’re both breathing heavily. Eddie is wearing his pajamas again, not that stupid fucking lab coat. His hair is soft, flopping down over his forehead. Richie whimpers, something close to a sob, and Eddie kindly does not remark on it. 

“Are you good?” Eddie asks, eyes wide. He lets his arms go. “Jesus. Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out that bad.”

Richie scrambles to sit upright, against the headboard, pulling his knees up to his chest. He glances to the foot of the bed but there’s nothing there. His bedroom door is shut. 

“For fuck’s sake, Eds,” Richie manages, fighting to keep his voice steady. “You attack a guy in his sleep and then yell at him for fighting back.” He says, quieter, “I was having a bad dream. Sorry.” 

“What about?” 

“I don’t remember,” Richie lies, his dick still throbbing. The wetness around his inner thighs is growing cold and sticky. “But it was scary.”

Eddie glances behind him, seeming a little nervous and shifty himself. He pulls his bare feet up onto the bed, hugging his knees to his chest, in a position mirroring Richie. Two kids up late at a sleepover, trading secrets in hushed tones. 

“Well, would you mind if I…” Eddie starts and then clears his throat. “Maybe I should… stay here? A while?” 

“Oh, no,” Richie says automatically, wrinkling his nose in disgust. The expression is easy to conjure because it’s how he feels, toward himself, almost all the time. Especially when he has a load of jizz soaking in his underwear at age forty. “You don’t have to do that.” 

“Well, I…” Eddie shifts again, glancing furtively over his shoulder. He looks so pale in the dark room. “I was up to use the bathroom. And when I walked out– okay, don’t say a fucking word, okay, Richie?”

Richie nods warily. He has no idea where this is going.

“Okay.” Eddie rakes a hand through his hair, slowly. It flops back against his forehead, piece by piece. “Well, when I walked out, the fridge was open. I saw the light from down the hallway, and went to the kitchen and the door was wide open. Of the fridge, I mean. So I closed it, and I thought it was probably you, you know, you forget to make sure it’s shut and it could swing open or something, so then I went to the bathroom. But when I came out I saw the light again.” Eddie gulps, clutching his hands together. 

He’s actually scared, Richie realizes, forgetting about his own issues for a second, wet nightmare and all. 

“So, I went out and the door was wide open again,” Eddie continues, “and there was all this– _food_ – sitting out on the floor, and it was all half-eaten. And I thought– what the fuck, was Richie sleepwalking? But then I heard you in here, and you sounded _freaked out_ , and I ran in here and you looked like you were having a seizure–” Richie winces, because he knows what type of convulsing he was actually doing, “–and between that and the kitchen and the bar earlier, I’m just– really freaked out, Richie.” His voice wavers a little at the end. He stares at his hands clasped in his lap.

Richie sits up and reaches for his arm, to comfort him ( _I should never have let you touch me_ ), but pulls back before he makes contact. 

“Sorry I scared you,” Richie mutters. He fists his hands in the sheets at his side.

“Can I stay here?” Eddie says. “I just… don’t think I’m going to get any sleep. And, honestly…” He glances toward the closed bedroom door. “I’m not leaving this room until it’s light out.” 

“Oh,” Richie says, blinking dumbly. “Well. Can I leave? I kinda have to piss…” 

Eddie glares at him. 

“Sorry,” Richie says with a shrug. “I mean. What do you want me to do? Risk wetting the bed? I could pee in… in…” Richie reaches for a dusty, half-full glass of water on his bedside table. “This?” 

Eddie sighs, his face murderous. At least he doesn’t look scared anymore. “Gross, oh my god, fine, jackass. Go pee. I’ll just turn the light on until you get back.” 

Eddie reaches for the bedside lamp, reaching across Richie’s body in order to flick it on. Richie turns away from him, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, to ensure that Eddie won’t see the dark, wet spot on the front of his gray briefs. And then, after grabbing a used but at least not freshly jizzed-in pair of boxers off his floor, he slinks off to the bathroom, leaving the bedroom door ajar. He doesn’t see any light from down the hallway, and either way, he does not want to investigate. He just wants to clean himself up and get back to bed. 

In the bathroom, Richie strips off his underwear and wipes out the fabric with toilet paper, flushing the scraps, before he begins to blot off his dick and stomach and thighs with a damp towel. He’s not quite soft yet, still filled out and hanging heavy between his legs. The water is cool on his skin, dripping down his thighs. He sucks in a breath through his teeth. 

The next time he touches the washcloth to himself, his leaves it there, pressing against his dick with a firmness that’s almost harsh, punishing. He thinks of Eddie waiting– _Eddie waiting in his bed_ – in his pajamas, and his wide nervous eyes, and the strength with which he held Richie’s flailing arms, the bruising-tight grip around his wrists… and he’s hard again. He can’t go to bed like this. He tosses the damp washcloth into the tub—it lands with a too-loud _splat_ —and takes his cock in hand, painfully sensitive at first from the lack of contact. He sucks in a breath through gritted teeth. He must have come untouched in his sleep; he was lying on his back, with only the slight pressure and friction of his briefs to rub off on. He wonders what he must have looked like, sounded like, how much Eddie saw. If Richie’s face was screwed up in pleasure, if he was whining and moaning, and jerking his hips. 

And still, Eddie stayed. Still, Eddie wants to sleep in Richie’s bed, next to him. ( _Yeah, rather than getting clown-murdered. You fucking pervert_.) That thought, to Richie’s almost-manic dismay, does not temper his arousal. 

He leans with one fist on the bathroom counter, biting his lip as he pumps his hand, flicking his wrist on each stroke. Pre-come begins to leak again, in a clear, sticky stream, as he thinks about the Eddie in his nightmare, this Eddie manifested by his id, half-fear, half-arousal. The way he sneered at Richie with disgust; the way he knew Richie’s secrets and threw them out like they were nothing. Richie wonders what Eddie—the real Eddie—would think of him if he knew, how he would look at Richie. If he saw him sneaking into his room when Eddie is out, looking at his things and carefully leaving everything in its place, smelling his shirts and pillow. If he saw Richie _now_ , hunched over the sink, his dick in his hand, chasing a second orgasm in under ten minutes, thinking about Eddie, like he always thinks about Eddie. 

Eddie could open the door—Richie didn’t even _lock_ it, he realizes wildly—he could open the door, and see Richie, and—what would he do? Stand there silently, his eyes boring into Richie’s? The eye contact would finish him off like a sword to the gut, there’s no doubt. Or if Eddie would say something to him… “You’re hard just from the thought of me in your bed, huh? Go on, Richie. Finish if you have to. I’ll wait.” Absurdly, fantasy-Eddie—who’s real-Eddie, sort of, he’s not nightmare-Eddie, anyway—waits, hands on his hips, tapping an impatient foot. 

It hits him in another second, and Richie’s orgasm is like falling out a second-story window and hitting the ground. The fall isn’t long, but the crash-landing is surprisingly hard, knocking the wind out of him and rattling his bones. Richie comes silently, though, a skill he’s perfected from years of jerking off with only a thin wall separating him from Eddie. Sometimes he can hear Eddie’s movements on the other side of the wall between their bedrooms, the creak of the bed frame that drove him particularly crazy through some loose association with that sound and sex, that was only strengthened, in a Pavlovian way, with each time he jerked off to it. The thought he has as he hits the ground—figuratively—is, _You can do this forever, huh?_

Richie cleans up again and slinks back into his room. Eddie is sitting on the edge of the bed, the lights still on. 

“What took you so long?” Eddie asks him. “Did you go look in the kitchen?” 

“No.” Richie crawls back into bed, pulling the sheets up. Eddie has gathered them from the floor, spreading them neatly over the mattress again. Mercifully, he doesn’t comment on Richie’s change of underwear. Eddie reaches to turn off the light as Richie settles in, which feels unbearably, inexplicably intimate. “Could it have been a dream?” Richie asks him. 

They’re lying on their backs, shoulder to shoulder, hands folded over their own stomachs. 

Eddie stares at the ceiling as he answers, “I think I know what’s a dream and what’s not a dream, Richie.” 

He probably meant to sound indignant, snappy. It comes out sounding forlorn, and a lot like someone who’s not confident in his ability to tell dreams apart from reality. 

Well, Richie’s right there with him. 

“That makes one of us,” Richie says, instead of pointing out Eddie’s less than convincing tone. 

Eddie huffs an unamused laugh and turns onto his side. The sheets tug at Richie’s shoulder, going taut between them. He can feel Eddie’s body heat collecting under the blankets. His hand twitches against the mattress, in the vacuum between their bodies.

Richie doesn’t close his eyes for a long time, staring at the empty space beyond the foot of the bed and listening to Eddie’s breathing as it evens out and deepens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: [skeilig](https://skeilig.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [skeilig_](https://twitter.com/skeilig_)
> 
> sex nightmare/dub-con warning: a scene where richie has a probably pennywise-induced nightmare in which eddie restrains and sexually humiliates him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a couple warnings for this chapter: non-graphic references to a homophobic hate crime and to anti-Semitism; use of a homophobic slur while recounting the arcade scene in chapter 2; some descriptions of violence and gore.

Canal Days are upon them. Richie and Bill work at the bar the first night of the festival, but it’s mind-numbingly slow; they never followed through with their coupon scheme because of more pressing issues, but fully closing the bar was a bridge too far, apparently. So, Richie is stuck there, serving a couple beers, and loading the dishwasher, and cleaning the urinals. The rest of the Losers were around for most of the day, aimlessly drinking while they made plans to avoid their impending deaths. 

Richie and Bill finally close up after one in the morning. There were a few stragglers, who were hardly worth it since they left no tips. They chat in the alley, beside the dumpster, Bill sitting on his motorcycle (quite the upgrade from Silver), and Richie standing on the first few steps up to his apartment above. 

“I think it’s going to be okay,” Bill says. He’s been saying this sentence a lot, and it gets a little less convincing each time, and more clear that he’s trying to convince himself of something. He’s holding his helmet in his hands, looking up at Richie. 

Richie shrugs, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “We did it once before, so yeah. It’s no big.” 

He doesn’t believe that at all, and he doesn’t try very hard to sell it.

Bill just laughs a little and says, “Yeah, no big.”

Richie takes a couple more steps backward, toward his door, and Bill puts on his helmet but he doesn’t leave yet. He looks up at Richie with that look in his eyes that says he’ll go in alone if no one will follow him.

“We’re the only ones who know,” he says. “The only adults, anyway. Don’t you wish someone else would’ve handled it when we were kids? Now, we’re the someone else. We can’t look the other way like they all did.”

All that social responsibility stuff never really worked for Richie. But what does work for Richie, and always has, is Bill’s stupid, unwavering bravery, his grim determination. Bill has a piercing gaze that’s always made him seem older; he grew up fast because grief does that to a kid. Even at thirteen years old, he looked at Richie the way his parents or teachers would when they said that they ‘expected more’ of him. Richie’s always had a particular weakness for that line. 

Now, it stirs up a complicated mix of emotions for Richie. He doesn’t want to disappoint Bill, sure, but the stronger motive has always been his fierce need to protect him. Bill is stupid and brave and he will go in alone, but Richie won’t let him. 

“This town doesn’t deserve you,” Richie tells Bill, smiling a little to play it off as a joke, but he means it so much that his chest aches. 

Bill rolls his eyes but he reaches out, scarred palm extended, for some weird manly low-five thing that Richie reciprocates, chuckling. Then he starts his bike and kicks off, rolling down the alley before he turns out onto deserted Main Street. Richie listens to the distant rev of the engine as Bill starts up the hill to his house. When he can no longer hear it, he continues up the stairs. 

The next day gets off to a bad start. 

Richie wakes up to someone patting his arm and saying his name—it’s Eddie—but before his half-asleep mind processes this, he flips out at the intrusion, thrashing his limbs wildly. 

Eddie says, “Holy shit, wake up,” as Richie’s eyes fly open. Eddie’s standing over him, already dressed for the day in jeans and a really ugly polo shirt. “Sorry,” he says curtly, stepping farther from the bed. “Um, something happened last night. Something… bad. I just heard from Mike. Everyone is downstairs.” 

Richie nods blearily, and fumbles for his phone on the nightstand. It’s barely seven. He is not well rested and has a feeling he won’t be getting much sleep for quite some time. He stumbles out of bed, dresses in a haste, ruffles his greasy hair so it looks more purposefully-tousled than slept-on, and runs downstairs to the bar without even brushing his teeth or putting on deodorant, which he only realizes once he’s sitting on a barstool next to the other Losers. 

They drink coffee, spiked to varying degrees with whiskey, and Mike grimly tells them the news: 

Adrian Mellon’s body was recovered from the Kenduskeag early that morning. Three men are already in custody for the assault, on the strength of Don’s witness statement, but the level of dismemberment suggests that there were more than just humans involved. 

While the Losers process and react, Richie… feels like his head is underwater. 

He takes a couple swigs of his spiked coffee, simultaneously numbing him and sharpening his senses, combining the alcohol brain fog with a caffeine heart rate. 

( _Dismemberment… what does—? His heart ripped out of his chest. Or bitten. Jesus Christ. Fuck. Doesn’t anybody at the sheriff’s office think that’s a little suspicious? No, of course not. No one can see anything in this town, nothing they don’t want to see._ )

Richie takes a few more sips and the blood turns thick in his veins. Everything slows; the fluorescents overhead hurt his eyes, and his friends’ muted voices echo too loudly.

( _Were the guys… they were locals, right? Yeah, this is obviously… the inside scoop, so this stays quiet, but it was– Chris Unwin and– Oh, of course it was. –and I think maybe his younger cousin? One of the guys is really young, like, seventeen. Fuck, that’s awful._ ) 

Richie stands up from the bar, unsteady on his feet and detached from his body as he makes his way to the bathroom. Once he’s inside, and locked into a stall, he realizes he’s hyperventilating, his breath coming in shallow huffs, chest rising and falling rapidly. He leans his forehead against the plastic stall divider and gasps for air.

The worst part was that, over the summer, Richie was starting to feel like he was the unreasonable one. For being so secretive, for hiding himself. He saw Adrian and Don’s casual openness, how comfortable they were in public, and he thought– _am I a total idiot? Could that be me? Was I wrong this whole time? Was I wrong to be so scared?_

Turns out Richie is not a total idiot. But god does he wish he was. He never wished he had been wrong more in his life. 

He hears the bathroom door open. Goddamn it. He sniffs harshly and rubs at his eyes, willing his voice to steady before he says, “Can a guy get some fucking privacy? We have an entire other bathroom.” 

There’s no answer, but in another second he recognizes the beat-up white sneakers that he can see under the stall. Beverly. She leans against the stall door from the outside, rattling the rusty lock. Richie instinctively takes a couple steps backward, closer to the toilet and farther from her. She still doesn’t say anything. But then he hears the distinctive _click-click_ of a lighter. He smells the smoke before he sees it, drifting up toward the ceiling, making the air foggy inside this enclosed, windowless space. 

“Hey, I don’t think you can smoke in here,” Richie says. 

On cue, she offers the cigarette to him, holding it through the too-wide gap in the door frame. He takes it, takes a long, lung-burning, steadying drag, and hands it back.

Sometimes, Richie is pretty sure she knows. They’ve never talked about it, but she’s smart and discreet, and she probably put things together after Eddie’s wedding, all those years ago. It was all really transparent. But Bev is a great guy, and she’s shitty with feelings, too, so she’s never brought it up directly. She just notices when Richie gets quiet, seeks him out wherever he’s hiding, and offers him a cigarette.

“What are they talking about now?” Richie asks her. 

“Oh, they have fully moved onto actionable items now. It’s like a board meeting out there.” She pauses long enough to take another drag; Richie hears her exhale, then she offers the cigarette back to him. “Mike and his ritual, you know… His usual vision-quest bullshit.” 

Richie scoffs. “Yeah, Mike, we’ve all gotten high. Glad it was so revelatory for you.” 

Bev laughs, that full throaty sound that Richie loves to coax from her. 

“This is all so fucked,” she says quietly. Her fingers poke back through the gap in the stall door. “Gimme.” Richie gives her back the cigarette, wipes his eyes one last time, decisively, and opens the door. 

Bev cocks an eyebrow at him. She leans against the wall between two urinals, smoldering cigarette dangling between her fingers. “Good?”

Richie nods. “Yeah, ‘m fine.”

Bev nods, and doesn’t call Richie out for how unconvincing he sounds, or for the fact that he’s clearly been crying. She just hands the cigarette back to him. Richie loves her. 

Sometimes he wishes that he hadn’t fucked up whatever chance they might have had. Maybe he could’ve taken his time and done it right, and they could’ve been together. It would’ve all been a lot less lonely. But that wouldn’t have been fair to her, he supposes. 

“He wasn’t even from here, Bev,” Richie says quietly, staring at the dirty wall just past her, the grime clinging to the cracks in the tile. “They were gonna leave soon, go back home.”

“I know,” Bev says, sighing a tense little sound. “It’s– really fucking awful. I know. Fuck.”

When they go back to the bar, mercifully no one comments on their disappearance, or the smell of cigarette smoke, or the lingering redness around Richie’s eyes. But Eddie’s gaze catches on him as he slides onto a barstool. Richie does not look at Eddie, or anyone else; he just grabs the lukewarm coffee that he abandoned ten minutes ago, takes a drink, winces, and says, “So, what’s the plan?”

Over a few more nerve-steadying drinks, Mike and Bill lay out the ground rules of the ritual: They each have to bring a sacrifice, some meaningful, personal object. They’ll burn them together and this will bring them closer as a group. As Mike puts it, “If there are any secrets left between us, now’s the time to unbury them.” (Richie rolls his eyes and says, “You always talk so fucking dramatically, man.”)

By mid-morning, they’re set loose to go find their tokens, with the instructions to meet back at the bar in two hours, and then they go to Neibolt. 

When he leaves the bar, Richie starts off down the street, already sure of his destination, and shoving his way through festival foot traffic. There’s a parade this afternoon, which strikes him as unbelievably macabre in light of the murder that happened not two blocks away, not even twelve hours ago. But that’s the Derry motto after all: nothing will rain on our parade, especially not senseless tragedy. 

Richie’s so focused on his mission, and on his misanthropic thoughts, that he doesn’t notice until the third time Eddie shouts his name, scrambling after him down the sidewalk. 

Richie turns around and waits for him to catch up, watching for a moment as Eddie swats away a bundle of balloons and cusses out the eight-year-old child carrying them. This doesn’t lighten Richie’s mood nearly as much as it should. 

“Richie, where are you going?” 

“Uh… token quest? Did you miss all that?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “No, I mean _where_. Do you already know what it is?” 

“I’m not gonna let you cheat off my homework, dude.” 

“Richie, why are you being like this? Seriously?” Eddie rubs his temples, looking extremely put-upon. “Can I just tag along while I brainstorm my own ideas? Besides, with all the shit that’s been happening, I’d feel better if we stuck together.” 

“Okay, fine,” Richie says flatly, and turns to keep going down the sidewalk. 

He passes the pharmacy and keeps going, turning off of Main Street to head a block farther from the river. Eddie half-jogs after him all the while, trying to start conversations in aborted little sentence fragments: _So that was really sad about… Um. Do you really think this is…? I’m not sure about…_

Richie doesn’t react to any of it. Finally, they reach his destination: the Capitol Theater, the decrepit old two-screen movie theater with the arcade games in the lobby, that’s been closed since—when? 2008? Maybe earlier. 

Richie reaches carefully through the shattered-glass doorframe to unlock the door while Eddie stands by in nervous silence. He steps inside, and Eddie follows him in, muttering, “You used to work here.”

Which he did, in high school. But he’s here now for a different reason, something a bit farther in the past. 

They stand in the middle of the deserted space. There are still a couple cobwebbed arcade games shoved against the walls. Streetfighter, Pac-Man, the photo booth with its tattered velvet curtain. Where there was once bright wallpaper and carpet, everything is grayscale from years of dust. 

“So,” Eddie says after a second. His hands are on his hips, looking around the place. “What is this about?”

Richie doesn’t answer. He takes a couple steps over to the token machine that is still, somehow, here. And, as he discovers when he fishes a quarter out of his wallet, still operational. He exchanges his quarter for a slightly larger and thicker token, emblazoned with ‘The Capitol Theater: Derry, Maine’ in tiny raised lettering. He presses it into the palm of his hand, and turns back to Eddie.

“I’m gay.”

Eddie blinks. “Okay.” His hands are still on his hips. 

“Okay?” Richie repeats, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it?” 

“Well, what’s the–” Eddie stammers a little, “–what does _this_ have to do with being gay?” He gestures at the token clutched in Richie’s hand and then at their general surroundings, the abandoned arcade, the tattered “You’ve Got Mail” poster on the wall. 

Richie turns to leave, yanking the door open and letting it fall shut behind him. 

Eddie calls after him, “Where are you going now? Richie!” 

Eddie follows him even as Richie jaywalks, dashing between cars, to the park across the street. Richie feels like he’s been having a slow motion panic attack for the past two hours, he’s almost desensitized to it. But Eddie is way too much to deal with right now, scrambling after him and squawking questions.

In the park, people are bustling about setting up a stage for some festivities later that night. When Eddie catches up with him, Richie is standing beside a bench, staring dead-eyed at the thirty-foot Paul Bunyan statue, the crown jewel of this half-block sized park in downtown Derry. 

“Richie, you’re acting really weird–” Eddie says, but he stops short when his eyes fall on Paul Bunyan and what’s peeking out from behind his tree-trunk legs. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he gasps, fumbling into his pocket for his inhaler.

A white-gloved hand curls long fingers around the giant lumberjack’s leg. The demented face of smeared makeup pops out, grins at them, mouth full of jumbled teeth, then retreats behind the statue again. The clown then pokes its head out a few more times, changing its expression each time, in some nightmarish approximation of peekaboo. 

“Oh, this fucking asshole,” Richie mutters under his breath. He looks around at the grass beneath his feet, quickly locating a short knobby stick that’s fallen from the oak tree overhead. He picks it up and hurls it in the clown’s direction, which is ineffective; the stick doesn’t have much mass so it doesn’t travel very far, falling limply back to the ground only a few feet in front of them. “Go on, get!” Richie shouts, kicking at the grass. “I can’t handle you right now, you stupid fucking clown.” 

A couple passersby glance over at them, but turn away, uninterested. The clown slinks back behind the leg of the statue and stays there. 

_Huh_. Whatever. 

Richie turns to Eddie, looking him in the eye for the first time since he got the news about Adrian that morning. “You knew already.” 

Eddie’s eyes are flickering rapidly between where Pennywise just was and Richie’s face. “I did?” 

“Yeah? Um. That time that we…” Richie gestures between the two of them, raising his eyebrows. “Do you really not remember that? I thought you were…” 

“Oh, no, yeah,” Eddie stammers. “I remember. I guess I thought… We were drunk? And I’m not…”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “You’re not. I know. No need to explain.”

“Well, and,” Eddie says, crossing his arms, “I was married. And we live together now.”

“Yeah, you _were_ married,” Richie says bitterly. “And we live together now.”

“What the fuck are you implying, Richie?”

“I don’t know!” Richie throws his hands up. He’s shouting, he realizes distantly. “I’m implying that the night you decided to leave Greta–”

Eddie narrows his eyes. “Stop.”

“–you got drunk and kissed me and let me suck your dick–”

“Richie, stop.”

“–and then you got divorced, moved in, and acted like it never fucking happened.” 

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie hisses, looking around in a panic at the unimpressed people setting up for the festival. No one pays them any mind. Fucking Derry. “Jesus Christ, we’re in a _park_. Broad fucking daylight. Children!”

“Oh, yeah, you’re so worried someone’s gonna find out. That’s how I’ve been living my whole fucking life, Eddie. That’s what this stupid fucking token means–” he shakes his fist, clenched around it, “–the day that I realized people could smell it on me, and I decided that I was gonna leave this town. That day, after Bowers called me a faggot, I sat on that bench–” Richie reels around wildly to point to it, “–and I cried my eyes out and I decided I would leave Derry and never look back.” He looks back at Eddie. “And I wish I had.”

There’s a moment of terrible silence. It seems like everything pauses around them, a moment of held breath. Eddie stares up at him, eyebrows furrowed. 

Then the air rushes back in, and Eddie spits, “Fuck you, Richie.” He turns and starts walking away, through the grass, back toward the street. 

Richie jogs after him, but Eddie only walks faster. “Eddie, where are you going?”

“To find my token,” he says, not turning around. “I’ll see you back at the bar.”

Richie catches up, falling into step beside him. He can move fast on his short legs. “Well, okay, I thought you wanted to stick together.”

“No, Richie, stop.” Eddie stops walking and turns on his heel. He shoves at Richie’s shoulder, and Richie stumbles back, unmoored. “You’re always fucking following me. Leave me alone.” 

Richie stands there with his mouth open, too shocked and hurt to reply. Eddie continues down the street, his arms swinging in time with his absurdly fast walking pace. 

Richie watches him until he disappears from sight, obscured by the line of buildings, then mutters to himself, “ _You_ followed _me_ , asshole. Fuck you.” 

Richie goes back to the bar, but he doesn’t go inside. Instead, he gets his car from the alley and drives out of town. The buildings of Derry fly past: the pharmacy and the synagogue and the strip of dusty antique shops. The houses up the hill, a suburban row of fences and front porches, neat postage-stamp lawns. Richie’s hands shake on the steering wheel, and he’s not entirely sure where he’s _going_ , except—away. He’s not packed for a long trip, or even an overnight stay, but he can’t stand to be in this town a second longer. 

When he was younger, in his twenties, and he felt this way, he would drive aimlessly. He would set out on a particular highway and follow signs until his gas tank was empty and he had to stop. True to form, Richie never considered the return; he would drive until two in the morning, and then find himself at a gas station almost to Albany, six hours from home, and too tired to drive back and too broke to buy a hotel room for the night. So he would sleep in his car for a few hours and start the drive back at first light. 

Now, he doesn’t make it quite that far. When he nears the city limits, and sees that stupid Thanks for Visiting! Come Back Soon! sign, he slams on the brakes and pulls over on the shoulder. 

As if anyone would ever visit Derry. The only people here are trapped. 

Richie stares out his windshield at the sign, still gripping his steering wheel, and feels like he’s going to cry or hyperventilate again, but he really doesn’t want to. 

He thinks about Eddie. His face when he said, ‘You’re always fucking following me.’ The sight of his retreating form, leaving Richie in the dust. 

That went fucking horribly. Like, worse than he even thought it would. 

There were times when Richie thought he was overreacting about this, too. That his fear was unfounded, and that he could acknowledge what had happened between them without destroying the tenuous peace they’d built. In his more optimistic moments, he thought that Eddie might even be _waiting_ for him to say something. What was the worst that could have happened, anyway? Most likely, Eddie would gently reject him, and things might be awkward for a while, but he was still friends with Richie, he still lived with him, after all. He can’t be totally disgusted by him. Eddie’s never been shy about what disgusts him. 

But Richie isn’t an idiot, and his fears are, unfortunately, tethered to reality. 

They had been drinking that night. Richie barely remembers it, both because of the time that’s passed and the alcohol, which is regrettable since it won’t happen again, apparently. At first, Eddie was complaining about Greta, something that Richie found exhilarating and nauseating, like the first drop of a roller coaster, but as they drank more, it eventually shifted to Eddie lamenting his own perceived character flaws. His inability to love or accept love, his unworthiness. The more Richie drank, the more frustrating this became, and the looser his own tongue got, so eventually he made some little improvised speech about Eddie, how great and lovable and worthy he is. Richie doesn’t remember all the specifics, but it went something like: ‘you’re better than the whole lot of them, Eds,’ and, ‘you’re a really special person, the way you see the world and move through it, I always want to know what you think about things, I could listen to you talk for the rest of my life.’ 

So, yeah. Really sappy, overly revealing shit. 

Then Eddie kissed him, clumsy and open-mouthed, and Richie had no ability to pump the brakes—he still doesn’t—so instead of considering what Eddie’s headspace might have been and whether it was a good idea to let it happen this way, he thought: _this is my chance_. And he pushed Eddie down flat on the couch, climbing on top of him and kissing him until he was breathless and pawing at Richie’s arms. From there, it was a rushed and fervent thing; Richie fumbled to undo his belt and took him into his mouth, and Eddie came down his throat in what felt like seconds but was probably minutes, shuddering, his arms crossed over his own eyes. After, Richie sat back on his heels and looked at Eddie’s beautiful, flushed face. Richie was probably harder than he’d ever been in his life, straining in his jeans, but it didn’t feel particularly urgent. He felt satisfied by proxy, and quite pleased with himself. 

Then Eddie scrambled off the couch and ran to the bathroom to vomit into the toilet. 

It was the alcohol, definitely, but it was not a very affirming followup to a blowjob. Richie stayed out of the bathroom while Eddie was getting sick because, one, every time Richie came close he started gagging in sympathy and he knew he would only make matters worse, and two, Eddie kept yelling at him that he was fine and to stay away. 

In the end, Eddie slept on the couch and Richie in his bed, leaving his bedroom door open all night, but in the morning, Eddie was gone. 

Then Eddie got divorced, and after a couple months of sleeping on Bill’s couch, he moved in with Richie, and they never spoke of it.

Until today. 

Richie groans in frustration and thumps his fist against his steering wheel a few times. The impotent honk of his horn answers him, in a mock imitation of his rage. 

_Fuck_ , Richie really shat the bed, huh? He already had Eddie in nearly every way he could hope to. They were _friends_ , they lived together, and Richie had spent thirty years telling himself he could be happy with that. He didn’t have to be greedy. 

_I should never have let you touch me_ , he thinks, hearing it in Eddie’s smooth, cruel voice. 

He’s going to cry. He takes a few shuddering inhales, bracing his body for it, but then another car goes racing past, snapping him out of his wallowing misery. 

Richie recognizes the car—it’s an ugly beige Camry—but not before the driver slams on the brakes, coming to a stop just past the Thanks for Visiting! sign and then screeches into reverse. 

Oh, shit. 

Richie dries his eyes on his sleeves, and sits there in his idling car as the driver gets out and marches toward him. It’s Stan.

“Richie?” Stan asks, squinting at him through the windshield as he approaches. 

“Yeah, hi,” Richie says, rolling down his window. “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?”

“I asked first.” 

Stan’s hands are on his hips, looking like an especially bitchy cop making a traffic stop as he leans down to peer through the open window at Richie. “Are you leaving town?”

“No, I’m, uh… considering leaving town.” Richie gestures through his windshield at the Thanks for Visiting! sign. “Hence stopping on the shoulder, right before I left city limits. Pretty high drama. You, on the other hand, were showing no signs of stopping, not even for a moment of symbolic reflection. You were flying right by.” He shoots him a shit-eating grin that must look demented accompanied by his tearful eyes. 

Stan sighs, seeming very annoyed. Then he stomps around to the other side of the car and tugs on the locked door. “Let me in, dipshit.” 

“Okay.” Richie clicks the lock and stares straight ahead as Stan slides into the passenger seat and closes the door again.

“I was having a moment of weakness,” Stan tells him. His voice is so grave that it startles a laugh out of Richie. 

“Okay, um. This isn’t a confessional.” Stan looks at him and Richie laughs again. “Sorry, um, in the Catholic faith, a confessional is–” 

“Shut up, Richie, I fucking know what a confessional is.” Stan waves his hands in a flustered, silencing motion. “Look, you’re obviously running away, too, so can we just… talk about it?” 

“Fine, okay,” Richie says. He crosses his arms over his chest and slides down in his seat. “Talk.” 

“I don’t know how the others do it sometimes,” Stan says. He’s clicking the lock on the door up and down, a nervous fidget. Richie glances over at his face in profile; Stan has a ring of little scars on his face, a halo around his temples and cheeks. But a halo from one of those fucked-up Old Testament angels with a million spider eyes. “The thing that’s really getting to me is, it might not just be Derry. For all we know, there are a thousand small towns just like this one, all over the country, all over the world. If it’s happening here, it could happen anywhere, you know? And how do you fucking cope with that? If it’s inescapable?”

“I guess you just don’t think about it,” Richie suggests, and Stan shoots him a withering look. “I’m not being an asshole,” Richie says quickly. “I’m just saying– that’s genuinely how I cope with it. I don’t think about it. And I don’t think that’s better. There’s something to be said for… looking in the mouth of the thing.” Richie doesn’t mean it quite as literally as it sounds. “It fucks you up, but at least you’re not willfully closing your eyes. _That’s_ cowardly. So, yeah, not that you fucking asked, but I don’t think you’re a coward, Stan. I think you’re just as brave as the rest of them, you’re just… smarter.”

“Oh, okay,” Stan says, rolling his eyes. “Thanks.” His voice drips with sarcasm. 

“You’re such a bitch,” Richie tells him, laughing fondly. 

“So, why are you running away?”

Richie doesn’t even hesitate. He says, “I’m gay.”

Stan blinks. His hand pauses for a half second on the lock before he resumes his up-down clicking. “That does not answer my question, but thanks for sharing.”

Richie laughs, feeling a little crazed. “It does, though. You’re not a coward, but I am.”

Stan stares at him for a long moment, and Richie can see the gears turning behind his eyes. Then he swallows, looks down, and says, “Look, Richie, the thing with Adrian–”

“It’s not even about that,” Richie interrupts, his voice louder than he intended. Stan goes quiet, giving Richie a moment to collect himself before he continues. “Well. Okay. It is, sort of. I can’t stop thinking about Don. He brought him here, and…” He shakes his head, trailing off. “But that’s… I’m not even that surprised by it, which is the worst part. But it’s mostly about…” He stops before he says ‘Eddie,’ both because it’s not completely true and he’s not ready for that part of the confession yet. So he finishes, “Me. And my own feelings. I don’t know if I can stay here any longer. I probably should have never stayed here in the first place, but I guess I don’t know how else to live.”

Stan doesn’t say anything for a long time. This stretch of highway is eerily quiet, no one coming or going. 

Finally, he says, “Do you remember last year when… when the synagogue was vandalized… and you all helped wash off the graffiti?”

“Yeah, of course,” Richie answers automatically. “Why?”

“I think about that a lot. You guys were all so angry. And I… I mean, I _was_ angry, but I guess I felt like… Yeah.” Stan shrugs. “This is just what happens in Derry. I was exhausted. You get worn down after a while. And maybe that’s what we have to do for each other. Be angry for each other. So, Richie, I guess what I’m saying is… I’ll fight for you, you know? I know you’re tired and you want it to stop so you’re gonna keep your head down. But I’ll fight for you.” 

Richie blinks back the tears that are suddenly burning at the corners of his eyes. “Holy shit.” He laughs a little, weak and wet, bubbling up around the lump in his throat. “Okay. Um. I love you, man.” Richie turns to him and Stan turns at the same time, colliding into a clumsy hug. 

“I love you, too,” Stan mutters against his shoulder. 

This feels really good, Richie realizes. Sort of hysterical and painful, but the good kind of pain, like when your muscles ache after you work out. The pain of growth and healing. 

This is– not technically the first time Richie has come out to someone. He’s hooked up with a number of guys over the years, of course, but… Well, that wasn’t really _coming out_. That stage of communication was conveniently skipped by the prerequisite of being on whatever particular app or in whatever particular bar. So maybe Eddie was the first person who Richie really came out to, in two disastrous stages. Just the thought of Eddie makes the tears in Richie’s eyes spill over. He nestles his nose into Stan’s shoulder and sniffs, holding him tighter for a second. 

“Ow,” Stan mutters, starting to squirm out of the hug. 

“Nope,” Richie says, giving him one last squeeze. “You brought this on yourself.”

They slowly untangle and sit back in their seats, giving each other fleeting glances and smiles. 

“So, what do you think?” Richie asks. “Has your moment of symbolic reflection at the thematically relevant Come Back Soon! sign changed your–”

Richie doesn’t get to finish his overwrought joke. His cell phone starts ringing in his pocket, and then, when he’s fumbled it out to see Bev’s name lighting up his screen, Stan’s phone starts ringing, too. “It’s Bill,” Stan mutters, his eyes round. 

That does not bode well. They both answer. 

Bev’s explanation is a jumbled mess of words, with a lot of background noise, and Richie can hear Stan reacting to presumably the same information next to him, which is distracting, but the takeaway is a rather shocking string of news that can be summarized as: one, Bowers escaped from a mental institution; two, Bowers broke into Richie and Eddie’s apartment and attacked Eddie (he’s _fine_ ); and three, Eddie killed Bowers. 

“ _What?!_ ” Stan yells into his phone, at the same time that Richie yells the same thing into his. 

“That came out of fucking nowhere,” Richie mutters as he hangs up. “Wanna come back for your car later?” Stan nods and buckles his seatbelt, and Richie peels out, executing a squealing u-turn before racing back toward town. 

Back at the apartment, Richie parks haphazardly in the alley, and they sprint up the stairs. The door is unlocked. There’s a lot of activity inside. Eddie sits at the kitchen table, Ben and Bev hovering around him. He holds a towel wadded up against his right cheek; the front of his ugly polo shirt is soaked in blood, dripping from his mouth and down his neck. He smiles ghoulishly, his eyes wild. 

He says, “Hi,” to Richie and Stan, causing some thick, dark blood to gurgle from his mouth.

“Sweetie, stop trying to talk,” Bev chides gently. Horrifyingly, she’s picking through a sewing kit, weighing her thread options, a needle held between her teeth. She talks around it to say, “Ben can you find some antiseptic for me?” 

In a daze, Richie makes his way toward the bathroom, where he can hear Bill and Mike’s voices, and Stan follows him. 

In the bathroom, a body lies slumped and bloodied against the wall. Richie catches a sight of it and gags, turning away in time to bump against Stan. 

“Oh, fuck,” Stan gasps, then, “Don’t puke on me, Richie.” 

Richie leans against the wall outside the bathroom, dry-heaving a few times, as he steadies himself. 

He turns back, bracing himself. There’s a lot of blood. Bowers’ face is recognizably rat-like as an adult, but a bit pudgier. His gray-blond hair is still cut in a mangy mullet. His skin is putridly pale, eyes unblinking. The blood-smeared handle of a knife sticks out of his gut. 

Richie shudders. “What the fuck are we gonna do?”

“Uh,” Bill says, running a hand through his graying hair. There’s blood on his shoes. “We’re working on that part. Maybe get him in the tub? Dissolve him like in… Breaking Bad?” 

“Oh, yeah, Billy,” Richie says. “That sounds great. Let’s dissolve him, in my apartment, where I live.”

“Has anyone called the police?” Stan asks.

Mike scoffs as if this is an absurd notion. And maybe it is. 

Bill, who has done lots of suspicious research for his unpublished crime novels, has some other ideas. 

Richie stumbles back into the kitchen, taking deep breaths. There’s no smell of rot yet, the death still fresh, but there is an overwhelming scent of iron that Richie can taste like pennies in the back of his mouth.

Eddie has removed the towel and left it in a bowl on their kitchen table. Richie eats cereal from that bowl. Or he used to. The cut is a clean horizontal line below his cheekbone. Bev sterilizes the wound with a couple antiseptic wipes from his first aid kit; Eddie bought that kit when he moved in and left it in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom where it was never used, aside from the bandaids. Eddie hisses in pain with each gentle swipe and Bev coos, “I know, I know, shh.” On the table, her sewing needle is threaded and ready to go.

Eddie looks grimly determined to make it through this, staring at the table. 

“Want a couple shots of whiskey before you start?” Richie offers, smirking weakly. He pulls out a chair to sit with the three of them. 

Eddie glares at him for a moment, his eyebrows low. Then his expression softens. “Maybe, actually. Would that help?”

But Bev shakes her head. “No, not with your cheek like this. That’s gonna burn like hell.”

She leans in close then, holding Eddie’s jaw steady with her left hand, and holding the threaded needle with her right. Eddie pinches his eyes shut, taking in a deep breath through his nose, and fists his hands on the table. Before Bev presses into his skin, Richie reaches across the table to offer his hand to Eddie. “If you need to squeeze,” he explains, when Eddie opens his eyes. “Don’t hold back.” 

Eddie takes his hand, and he doesn’t hold back. Richie grits his teeth and lets out a pained little laugh as the tips of his fingers turn white. 

“I think… is that needle a little thick, Bev?” Ben asks, squinting as he peers over her shoulder. 

Eddie mumbles through still lips something that sounds like, “Yeah, fucking hurts.” 

“Do you have a thinner needle, Ben?” she snaps back, and keeps going. 

Bev has completed two stitches, back and forth, and all the circulation to Richie’s hands has been cut off, when Bill pokes his head out of the bathroom. He eyes the worn-out, stained area rug in the living room. 

“Hey, uh, Richie,” he says, pointing at it. His voice is absurdly casual. “We’re gonna use this? If that’s okay?”

Richie nods warily. “Uh. Sure. Go for it.” 

Bill and Mike and Stan start moving furniture, lifting the couch and coffee table and TV stand, and then carry the rug back to the bathroom. 

Richie exchanges a wide-eyed glance with Ben. Holy shit, right?

While Bev keeps suturing Eddie’s wound, taking a long pause after each pass until Eddie nods his consent to continue, they listen to the muffled arguing and grunting and rustling coming from the bathroom. At one point, Mike comes into the kitchen and wordlessly starts rooting around through the cabinet under the sink until he finds the garbage bag liners. He disappears again. 

When Bev is finally done with the stitches—loose and unevenly spaced, but holding Eddie’s cheek together—and moves onto the gauze, the other three Losers come shuffling down the hallway, carrying the rolled-up rug between them. They’ve secured the two ends of the rug with duct tape. It’s lumpy and looks incredibly suspicious. Bill and Mike each take an end, and Stan supports the drooping middle.

“Hey, Richie,” Mike says, still unnervingly calm. He shifts his end of the rolled-up rug, wincing under the weight. “Can we use your car?”

“Uh. Totally.” Richie frees one of his hands from Eddie’s death grip, which has persisted even though the worst of it is over, in order to dig his keys out of his pocket and toss them to him. 

Mike coolly catches them, one-handed, nods his thanks, and they keep shuffling out the door and down the stairs. Richie hears his engine start. 

“Oh my god,” Eddie mutters, still not moving his mouth so it comes out muffled. “I killed a guy.”

Bev finishes taping up the square of gauze—there’s already a little spot of blood growing out from its center—and gives his cheek a firm pat that makes him flinch. 

“Yeah, you badass,” Richie tells him, grinning even as his heart twists. “Are you okay?” 

“Uh, yeah?” Eddie finally lets go of Richie’s hand and shakes out his shoulders. “I don’t know. Fuck. Thanks, Bev.”

Richie is sort of perversely glad that they don’t have to address what happened between them earlier. It seems pretty fucking insignificant all of a sudden. 

“So, um.” Richie leans back in his chair, looking at each of their faces. “When they come back from… wherever… it’s probably showtime, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bev confirms. She wipes off the needle on her jeans and packs up her sewing kit. “Strap in.”


	3. Chapter 3

The house on Neibolt looks the same. It hasn’t decayed more in the past few decades, but instead froze in stasis. Now that he’s an adult, Richie finds himself wondering about zoning and who owns this lot, and whether the abandoned house constitutes a public safety concern—well, obviously it does—but it’s Derry. The other adults don’t really think like that. This property is surely missing from the public records in the same way it’s a blindspot in everyone’s memory. 

Although, there are some littered cigarette butts and beer bottles on the lawn. So someone’s been here. Maybe teenagers like to hang out here and throw rocks at what remains of the shattered-glass windows. The Losers never did that, steering clear of Neibolt Street altogether in favor of gathering at Mike’s uncle’s farm or in Bill’s basement where his absent parents never noticed if they pilfered booze. 

They traveled over here piled into Richie’s car, Bill taking his motorcycle with Bev reluctantly on the back. While he drove, Richie asked his copilot Stan, “So… What did you do with Bowers?”

“Do you wanna know?” Stan had asked him, quirking a brow. 

Richie chuckled. “You total badass.”

Eddie did _not_ want to know. From the backseat where he sat wedged between Ben and Mike, he said shortly, “Can we stop talking about this? Thanks.” 

So that was that. Richie will find out eventually what they did with the body; his morbid curiosity far outweighs the wisdom of maintaining plausible deniability. 

Now the seven of them are standing in a staggered formation in front of Neibolt, as if they’re posing for an album cover. Richie’s about to make that joke but before he can, Bill turns around, a grim expression on his face. He’s definitely about to say some words. 

“We need to stick together in there,” he says, looking at each of them in turn. “We all remember It’s tricks. It’ll try to split us up. Don’t let it.” 

Everyone nods, gripping their flashlights or, in Eddie’s case, strapping on a headlamp. He looks like such a fucking nerd. The spot of blood on his cheek bandage has dried into a muddy brown. Mike is armed with the clunky silver bolt gun that he carried the last time; he couldn’t bring himself to pawn it off even after selling the farm. Bev picks up a loose fence stake, its decorative pointed end like a dagger. 

And they walk into the house. 

It’s still bright outside, late afternoon, the hottest part of the day, but the air turns cool and damp as soon as they step inside. They move slowly in a huddle, holding each other’s elbows and taking shuffling steps forward. It reminds Richie of the one time in high school when they all went to a haunted house on Halloween. Well, it wasn’t even a house; it was held in the transformed hallways of the high school and it was a fundraiser for… the football team? Or maybe the theater department? Something like that. It was supposed to be fun or maybe the Losers had something to prove to themselves. All it proved in the end was that they all were still pretty jumpy at age sixteen or seventeen. Bill got so startled he nearly punched one of the actors. Afterward they laughed off their nerves and embarrassment in the parking lot and decided it’s fine if they’re all chickenshits. Don’t they have every right to be? 

The occasion sticks out in Richie’s memory because as soon as they walked into the haunted house Eddie grabbed onto Richie’s arm, his grip tight just above his elbow, and didn’t let go until all was clear. He’s doing that now, too. Richie shoulders his way to the outside of the pack, letting Eddie take a more sheltered place in the middle of the crowd. He already got stabbed once today and he’s being one tough motherfucker about it, but Richie can tell he’s shaken. 

“It’s kind of a nice house,” Bev remarks dryly. When everyone looks at her, she doubles down. “The architecture! I like this old style.”

“Victorian Gothic,” Ben supplies.

“When do you think this was built?” she asks him.

He considers it for a moment. “Probably 1860s. Thereabouts.” 

“What, do you wanna fix it up and live here?” Richie asks Bev, teasing. They’re still creeping down the hallway toward the stairs that will bring them to the underground well. There’s black slime oozing out of cracks in the floorboards and dripping down the walls. “Like in, uh. _It’s a Wonderful Life_. Is that what you wished for the last time when I smashed that bottle?” 

She says, “Fuck you,” and Richie laughs. 

“Who makes a wish on broken bottles?” Eddie asks. He’s still holding onto Richie’s arm, close behind him.

“No one,” Richie tells him. “That was a joke. Because in the movie they make a wish when they break glass–”

“I know,” Eddie huffs, cutting him off.

“If you know then why did you–?”

“Oh my god,” Stan says quietly. “Is this seriously what we’re arguing about right now?” 

The lighthearted chatter has set them all at ease. The group drifts a little farther apart, clinging less tightly to each other. This is how, when they cross the threshold into the kitchen, there’s enough space for the door to slam shut and separate the group in half. 

Richie whirls around at the whoosh of air rushing past his face. It’s too late. “Fuck.”

He, Eddie, Bill and Stan are on one side of the door, in the kitchen, the stairs to the basement just beyond another door across the room. Bev, Ben and Mike are on the other side, still in the hallway. 

There are a few frantic seconds where Bill and Eddie and Richie pull on the doorknob and pound on the wood and call out to their friends, who are knocking and calling back to them from the other side. 

“Guys! Hey, guys!” Eddie yells. “Are you okay?” 

“What’s going on?” Bev’s voice answers. The door rattles on its hinges, taking the assault from both sides. 

Stan intervenes then, pulling at their shoulders. “Hey, guys, stop for a second. What if we’re both pulling on the door and working against each other? Quit it for one second.”

It’s surprisingly reasonable, even if his voice is wobbly and panicked while he says it. So the three of them take a step back. In the following silence, they hear… nothing from the other side of the door. 

“Hey, guys?” Richie calls out hesitantly, and then louder. “Hey, are you still there?” 

No answer. 

“Fuck,” Eddie mutters. He turns away from the door, wringing his hands. “This is really bad.” 

Bill pulls on the doorknob a few more times in vain. He kicks the door and his boot thumps dully.

“Okay,” Richie says decisively. “There must be another way out of here, okay?” 

He scans the room. The gutted kitchen is missing most appliances except for a small fridge that stands out a ways from the wall. A layer of dust and grime coats the countertops. A mess of wires pokes from the wall where an oven probably used to be. The door leading to the basement glowers ominously at them; it’s open just a crack, outlined in darkness. 

Richie turns his attention to the window on the far side of the room. Worst comes to worst, they can jump out the window and re-enter the house from the front door to reunite with their friends. He strides across the room and starts pushing up on the lower glass pane. It doesn’t budge, but Stanley appears beside him and flicks the lock on top of the pane, muttering, “Idiot.” 

“Thanks, Stan,” Richie tells him, only half sarcastically. They both push up on the glass with effort, breaking it free from the position where it’s sat for decades. With a creak of wood, the window begins to slide up. 

“Hey,” Stan calls to Eddie and Bill. “We might be able to–”

Before the window opens more than an inch, there’s a feeling like free fall. Richie’s stomach drops and his vision blurs. Wind rushes past his face, and Richie finds himself spilling out into the bushes beyond the window, scuffing his knees in dirt. 

“What the fuck?” he sputters, scrambling to sit upright. Stan is sprawled out beside him, looking equally confused. 

Somehow they’re outside of the house. The window is closed again. 

They both spring to their feet. The bottom of the window is just low enough that they can both see inside without straining. Inside, Bill and Eddie are at the window now, banging on the glass and trying to open the window to no avail. Their voices are muffled.

“What the fuck happened?” Eddie asks frantically. 

“I don’t know!” Richie yells back. “Did you see anything? Suddenly we were falling and–”

“I didn’t really see anything,” Bill tells him. “It’s like you fell through the floor. You were here one second and you were gone the next.” 

“Should we go around to the front?” Stan asks Richie, elbowing his side. “Maybe we can get back in, find the others, and then we can–”

He trails off when he and Richie both see the same thing at the same time. 

On the window, on the top plane of glass far above their heads, lettering has appeared, dripping down in red:

RUN AWAY

Richie scoffs. “Okay, I get it,” he says to the walls of the house. “Very cute, but we’re not leaving anymore. We’re staying.” To punctuate that statement, he thumps the wood siding with the heel of his hand. “Fuck you.” 

Eddie’s looking up at the lettering from the inside, backwards from his point of view. “Richie, was does–?”

Before he can finish that, he spins around suddenly, leaving Richie’s sightline. 

“Eddie!” Richie calls. He gets on his toes, clinging to the windowsill with clawing fingers, to peer inside. He can see now. Eddie and Bill are huddled together on one side of the room. On the other, the basement door has swung wide open.

For a moment, it’s nothing but yawning darkness. Then a figure stumbles up the stairs and into the light. 

Richie hears Eddie’s yelp before he processes what he’s seeing. It’s a deathly skinny thing, sallow skin and tattered clothing. Its bandaged hands swing like clubs at its side. The rotted out nose leaves a crater on the center of its face. 

For a moment, Richie watches as Bill and Eddie scatter to opposite corners, dodging the thing as it approaches. Then he grabs Stan’s arm and crouches down. “Come on,” he encourages, until Stan hops up on his shoulders. 

Richie stands back up, swaying unsteady under Stan’s weight until he locks his knees and grips onto the windowsill again. Stan starts trying to shove the glass up, but it’s obvious it’s not going to work. 

“You have to break it,” Richie tells him. 

He can see inside the house again, and things have progressed. The creature, the leper, has cornered Bill, terrible jaws gnashing just inches from his face, where Bill barely manages to hold it at bay. Eddie stands stock-still against the opposite wall, eyes wide and unblinking. 

“Oh shit,” Richie mutters, and adjusts Stans weight on his shoulders. “Wrap your shirt around your fist and break the window.” 

Stan starts unbuttoning his shirt until he’s stripped to his white undershirt. His first punch is laughably weak, but before Richie can comment on it, he snaps, “Shut the fuck up, Richie,” and makes a better effort. 

Still, it doesn’t even crack the glass. 

Inside, Bill struggles against the leper and Eddie is frozen in the corner. 

“A little help, Eddie!” Bill calls out to him, his voice strangled. 

“Eddie! Eddie!” Richie calls. Eddie’s eyes flicker to meet his through the window for a fleeting moment and then his trains his gaze back on the floor. “You gotta do something, man.”

Eddie shakes his head, eyes wide.

“Come on, there’s two of you,” Richie yells. “Come on, you can do it. You killed Bowers, right?”

Eddie pales at that and Richie realizes it was probably a mistake.

So, he takes a different approach, while Stan keeps battering the window. “He’s not gonna do anything,” Richie says, projecting his voice to be sure he’s heard, but not quite shouting anymore. “He’s too scared. Look at him. Don’t know why I’m surprised.”

That does the trick. Fucking predictable.

Eddie springs into action, motivated by anger and spite. He jumps on the leper, hooking his elbow around its neck in a chokehold that he perfected long ago in their play-wrestling days. 

Confident that things are turning up, Richie takes a step back from the window, still holding onto the windowsill, and says, “Kick it.” 

“You’re sure?” Stan asks. He holds onto Richie’s head to keep balance.

“Sure,” Richie confirms and braces himself. 

Stan lifts his right leg and just as he kicks out Richie lunges forward. Shards of glass rain down over Richie’s hands and fall into the bushes below the window. Stan crawls into the window and, after brushing away the broken glass, helps haul Richie up and over, too. Richie feels extremely ungraceful, flopping across the windowsill on his belly like a walrus, but it does the trick. 

Once they’re back inside, the leper has disappeared completely. The only evidence of it ever having existed, in fact, is the black slime that coats Eddie from head to toe. It’s even soaked through the gauze on his cheek. 

“Oh god. I can taste it.” Eddie gags. “Fuck, it’s in my mouth.” 

Richie grimaces and reaches to pat his shoulder. “You did good.” He looks to Bill, who is unharmed—and unslimed—but a bit disheveled. 

Eddie asks, “What was that you said, Richie?” 

“Oh, I was just–” Richie takes his hand away and runs it through his own hair, realizing only belatedly that he ended up streaking alien slime through it. “Sorry about all that, I was just trying to get you mad enough that you wouldn’t be scared, I guess? And hey, it worked. But I didn’t mean it–”

“No, not that,” Eddie says quickly, waving a hand. “The writing on the window. And you said, ‘we’re not leaving anymore.’”

“Oh, um…” 

That’s as far as Richie gets before the door to the kitchen opens. The rest of the Losers join them, Mike, Ben and Bev. They seem a little worse for wear, but ultimately okay. After quickly checking in, Bill is the one who brings the attention back to Richie.

“Yeah, what did that mean?”

“Stan and I had a moment of weakness earlier,” Richie explains, shooting Stan a grim, embarrassed smile. “We ran into each other on our way out of town. I think It was… mocking us for that. ‘Run away.’ You know.” He shrugs. 

After a moment, Bill says, “You guys don’t have to do this. It’s your life and you’re free to choose. If you want to leave, you should leave.”

“Okay, Bill, I’m sorry,” Richie says, “but how were we ever supposed to ‘freely choose’ anything with you? 

“What does that mean?”

Richie lets out a frustrated sigh. “Well, our choice is either to basically let you kill yourself or try to keep you alive. That’s not much of a choice.”

“Richie,” Ben says, quiet and tense. 

Bev says, “Richie, come on. We’re not gonna do this now.”

“No,” Bill says. “B-b– By all means, if you have ssss-something to say, then…” He makes a gesture instead of speaking, the words trapped in his suddenly tense throat. 

Richie sighs, rubbing his temples.

Mike pipes up to say, tentatively, “I don’t think we should… We have to stay strong as a group right now?”

Richie snaps, “Of course I’m the only one who’s ever tearing us apart, right? By speaking up?” He turns to Bill, his expression totally open and imploring. “Bill, I love you, but you only play this ‘every man for himself’ card when it suits you, when you want to sacrifice yourself without the rest of our lives on your conscience. It was one thing when we were thirteen, but… Look, we’re here, we’re doing this with you, we’re doing this _for_ you, can you just acknowledge that that’s what’s happening here? We _are_ a group. None of us are here alone.”

There’s a long beat of silence. Everyone stares at their shoes while Richie and Bill stare at each other.

“I can’t…” Bill shakes his head and finally breaks eye contact. He swallows hard, his adam’s apple bobbing. “I can’t take responsibility if something happens to any of you.”

He looks _scared_ , his face pale, and like he’s going to cry. Immediately, Stan crowds in on him, holding his arms, and says, “Hey, hey, Bill, it’s not like that. Okay? We’re all adults. We chose to be here. You’re not responsible for our safety.”

Oh… So Richie’s a total asshole, huh? 

He stands there awkwardly silent as each of the Losers steps in to comfort Bill with gentle touches and soothing words. 

Because of course Bill is flighty about putting his friends in danger. He’s been living with the guilt of his brother’s death on his conscience for almost thirty years. He stepped back from the leadership role within the group for a reason. It got to a point where he could no longer bear to make even small decisions if they would impact all of them. 

“Okay,” Richie says, letting out a tense breath. “I’m sorry. Obviously we’re all adults, we all know the risks. If anything happens, it’s no one’s fault. I guess, for me, what I was trying to say was… I don’t feel like I had a real choice in any of this.”

“I don’t think any of us did, Richie,” Bill says sadly. 

Richie nods, remembering all too clearly now why he doesn’t speak up more often. He always ends up feeling like an insensitive prick by the end of it. Of fucking course Bill didn’t choose any of this. He didn’t choose for his brother to be killed. 

“Okay, you’re right,” Richie says. “I’m sorry. Tantrum over. Let’s keep going.”

After exchanging a few more glances and tense smiles, they start down the stairs as a group, flashlights gripped at their sides. Richie ends up at the back of the pack beside Eddie. They always gravitate toward each other. He doesn’t look him in the eye, but while they stand side by side, tying ropes together for their descent into the well, Eddie asks quietly, “You really almost left?”

Richie frowns. “Not really,” he says. “I was just… thinking about it.”

“Was this after…?” Eddie trails off, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah,” Richie says shortly. “It wasn’t because of… anything you…” His throat starts to close up in emotion, so he shakes his head, warding it off. “Whatever. Like I said, tantrum over, I’m here, let’s kill this fucking clown.”

Once they all rappel safely down the well, they walk through dry tunnels for a while before they have to get wet. 

“Ack, I didn’t miss this,” Eddie mutters. “Wading through raw sewage.” 

Richie follows Eddie, in his wake, as it were. They’re only up to their shins now, but the incline of the tunnel slopes gradually downhill so it gets deeper and deeper with every passing minute. The gray water is murky and dark, impenetrable by their flashlight beams, and in some places disturbingly foamy. 

“I don’t think it’s raw sewage,” Stan says. “We have a wastewater treatment plant. This is just stormwater runoff. Right?” 

“No, I think it’s combined,” Mike says. “So I think it’s both.” 

“Bullshit– Bill, you should know,” Stan says, turning to him, “because of your dad. What is all this?” 

“Uh, I think Mike’s right,” Bill says. “It’s a combined sewer system. This is an overflow chamber. So when it rains a lot, and it’s over capacity for the treatment pant, this fills up.” 

Stan visibly pouts about being wrong; he’s probably more upset about that than about learning that he is in fact walking through untreated shit water. 

“Oh, lovely,” Richie mutters. His socks are soaked, sloshing in his shoes. 

Without incident, they arrive first in the cistern, where they fought It the last time, twenty seven years ago. This time, they go deeper, crawling down into an earthen tunnel. It widens gradually as they keep walking, the stone walls damp with condensation.

“How far underground do you think we are?” Bev whispers. 

“Maybe a quarter mile,” Ben says, in what is clearly an educated guess but based on no actual evidence. “Even farther maybe.” 

“How is there light down here?” Stan mutters. “That doesn’t make any sense.” 

It’s true, Richie realizes. They still have their flashlights aimed forward, but there’s an ambient glow surrounding them

“That’s the part that doesn’t make sense?” Richie asks, smirking. 

“Yes,” Stan snaps. “I mean, it’s a part that doesn’t make sense. Not just physically; what would be the point of providing light _supernaturally_ if that’s what’s happening? It wants us to be able to see?” 

“Maybe It needs light to see, too?” Mike ventures. 

“Oh, that’s… an interesting theory,” Eddie says thoughtfully. Richie laughs. 

They keep walking, one by one turning off their flashlights, the unsettling green glow getting steadily brighter until it’s plenty to light their path. Finally they arrive in a huge cavern. Stalagmites stretch up from the ground at odd angles, creating a nest-like structure in the center of the space. 

Mike leads them there, where they stand in a circle, glancing uneasily over their shoulders. He takes the leather basket that he’d been carrying hanging off his shoulder and places it in the middle of their circle.

“Did everyone manage to get their tokens here unscathed?” Mike asks them with a slight smile. 

“Oh, shit, we were supposed to bring something?” Richie jokes. “I knew I was forgetting something.” 

Apparently no one’s in the mood for it because they ignore him. Except Eddie, who is physically incapable of completely ignoring Richie; he rolls his eyes slightly. 

Mike drops a lit match into the basket and it goes up with a whoosh, the flames licking up the sides before they settle into a low simmer.

“Shit,” Bill chuckles nervously. “What’d you put in there? Gasoline?” 

“Do you want to go first, Bill?” Mike asks him.

He nods and reaches into his back jeans pocket. He pulls out an old family photo, folded in half but still in good condition. 

While he fiddles with the dog-eared corner of the photo, he says, “We used to take a family photo every year. Our neighbor would take them. She was really interested in photography, she had a good camera. I remember… I think I remember the first time Georgie was in the photo. It was this one.”

He turns it to show to the rest of the Losers for a second. A young Bill, blond and bright-eyed, holds a baby in his lap. Their parents sit on either side of them, on the lawn in their backyard in Derry. There’s a row of pine trees behind him, each one little more than a sapling.

“Or maybe it’s just that I’ve seen the photo and I constructed a memory around it,” Bill says. “I must have been four. I could remember it. But I’m not sure if it’s real, or how much of it is. They say that every time you remember a memory you rewrite it in some way, alter it, you know?” He takes a deep breath. He’s speaking slowly, clearly, purposefully. “My parents, to this day, have barely processed what happened. We never got back to feeling like a family. They got divorced and use me as their go-between to communicate. You know, my childhood was stolen, by It, but my parents never really tried to make it better. I can’t imagine what they were going through. He was my brother, but losing a child must be… And they never got _any_ answers… I don’t want to resent them… But.” 

Bill shrugs and tosses the photo into the fire. He rubs at his eyes once, decisively. 

Mike reaches to pat his shoulder as the flames rise and die back down. “Thanks, Bill. Love you.”

The rest of the Losers echo it. “We love you, Bill,” Bev says, shooting him a straight-mouthed smile and a slight nod across the fire. 

“Okay, Eddie?” 

Eddie takes a deep breath and withdraws his inhaler. Looking at it, gripped in his hand, he says, “The thing about me is, I… It doesn’t even matter that I know it’s fake, you know? It still works. And I don’t know what that says about me, as a person. That I’m really suggestible or weak-willed, or… I’m doing what my mom used to do, but I do it to myself now, you know? It’s bullshit. Anyway.” He shrugs with finality and tosses the inhaler into the smoldering flames. “Enough of that I guess.”

“Proud of you, Eds,” Bev says, smiling and reaching to pat his arm. 

He shoots her a fleeting smile. 

Richie is up next. He takes the token from the Capitol Theater out of his pocket and holds it in his hand, feeling its cool weight. He wants to say it, knows he should, that he _has_ to. It’s truly now or never, in the realest sense. Most of them already know, anyway. Why is it so fucking scary? 

“Okay, so.” Richie inhales. “I’m gay.” 

Richie is shaking, in a cold sweat, even as he steps forward to drop his token into the flames. He crosses his arms and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. 

After a beat, Bill says slowly, “That’s it? You’re not going to… elaborate on that?”

“No. I’m not,” Richie snaps, getting enough fuel from the flash of anger to glance up and look at him. “I mean, what do you want me to do, Bill? Wax poetic about how much I love dick? I’m gay and I never told you guys, so now I’m telling you, and I think that fulfills the assignment. Next. Stanley, what would you like to share with the class?”

Stan laughs a little, awkwardly, but he doesn’t play along with Richie’s diversion. 

“Thanks for telling us, Richie,” Bev says with a warm smile. The brief moment of sincerity is ruined when she adds, eyebrows raised, “It explains some things.”

Richie flips her off as the rest of the Losers scramble to extend their congratulations and affirmations. Even Stan and Eddie who already knew pretend like they didn’t. “Thanks for, uh, telling us, Richie,” Eddie mumbles, his eyes meeting Richie’s and then darting away. At least he has the grace to look about as embarrassed as Richie feels. 

It’s all pretty excruciating but it’s over soon enough. The group falls quiet again and Stan takes a little book out of his shirt’s breast pocket. It’s a birdwatching pamphlet, identifying in illustrations the most common birds of Maine. Stan has had it forever, and the wear and tear shows, but only slightly. It’s in surprisingly good condition for its age; a few dog-eared pages and the thin spine is cracked, but it looks good. Richie used to steal that book and flip to the page on the tufted titmouse and make the laziest jokes imaginable. 

“I used to be kind of a shithead about this stuff,” Stan starts with wry humor. 

“Used to be?” Richie mutters.

Stan snaps at him, “Richie, we let you have your time, seriously?” 

“Okay, sorry,” Richie says, chuckling. “Sorry.” 

“I was trying to think of what I wanted to bring for this,” Stan says. “There hasn’t been a lot that I’ve kept from my childhood, to be honest. But this was hard to get rid of. I used to rely on this kind of thing so I could stop being so scared. Memorizing things. And that’s completely irrational. I’m just filling my brain up with other stuff so I don’t have to think about it. Richie said something earlier to me about ‘not looking at it,’ just trying to ignore it… I’m not good at it, but I’ve been trying for thirty years.” He sighs and tosses the little book into the flames. 

Bill shoots him a grim, supportive smile over the fire. “Glad you’re here, Stanley.”

“I’m not,” he deadpans, stirring up a laugh. “I’m not glad, but I am here.” 

Bev is up next. She reaches into her loose t-shirt to pull a folded-up bit of paper from her bra. “Safe-keeping,” she explains. It’s a postcard, clearly quite old. ‘Historic Derry Maine’ on the front, beside a photo of the standpipe. She unfolds it and smiles sadly at whatever’s on the inside for a moment. “I… kept this because when I was a kid it made me feel like someone who could be loved. But that scares me, too. And what I’m realizing now is I’m actually pretty screwed up and can’t have a real, functional relationship, and the things that people said about me in high school? Apparently true!” Bev shrugs jerkily. “I mean, I’ve fucked most of you.”

The Losers all blink, taking a moment to do the same mental math. 

Bev and Bill were together for a long time, of course, and Bev and Mike dated for no more than two months when they were thirty-two. Over the years, Bev’s dated lots of other guys in Derry, including some guys who were real assholes to the Losers—so her antagonism toward Greta was kinda rich—but as far as anyone else knows, she doesn’t have any more notches on her belt from members of the Losers Club. 

“Wait,” Eddie says, finally breaking the silence. “Sorry, not to derail, but: Bill… and Mike… and…?” 

“Ben and I have been hooking up and I touched Richie’s dick one time,” she says airily. “But that doesn’t really count, I guess, since he started crying.” 

A few things happen at once: Ben’s face goes pink at the reveal; Eddie sputters out, “Richie? You hooked up with _Richie?_ When?”; Richie says, “Bev, okay, that’s not– I mean, I _did_ cry, but the way you said it was kinda–”; and Bev says, “So, I guess Eddie’s wife was right about me! I’m just a dirty skank after all!”

Eddie is still too hung up on the first part, saying, “ _Richie?_ ” over and over, that he misses Bev’s mention of Greta completely. 

Bill stammers a bit, saying, “W-w-wait, so you and B– uh, Ben now are…?”

Ben stares wide-eyed at the ground. His eyes flicker up to Bev’s face and back down. “Bev, you really kept that?”

Beverly sighs. She tosses the folded, sun-faded postcard into the flames and rubs her temples. “Yeah, I kept it. Ben, I just… I know it seems like I’ve been stringing you along. I’m sorry. I’m…”

“You don’t have to explain anything,” he says gently. 

“I think I should, though,” she tells him. She crosses her arms and shrugs, defensive body language. 

Richie clears his throat. “Well, maybe you can sort that out later. If there is a later. Next?” 

Bev shoots him a predictably venomous look, but she doesn’t say anything.

Ben is next in the circle. He reaches into his pocket for an envelope. “Remember I was thinking about applying for the architecture program at Cornell? This is my acceptance letter.” 

The Losers all snap their heads up to look at him in surprise. “You applied?” Bev asks him. “You got in?” Bill adds. “When?” Stan asks. 

“Uh…” Ben squints, thinking. “Four years ago? I deferred acceptance for a while, but… Yeah. It wasn’t gonna work to leave. When it came down to it, I just… couldn’t. Because of my mom and because of you guys… You guys are the only friends I’ve ever had. I guess leaving feels… like it’s not an option. Maybe after this, though. I’ll need to reapply, but… maybe.”

He taps the envelope against the palm of his hand once before dropping it into the basket. The flames rise and fall, consuming it. Everyone stares at the flickering light, apparently too bummed out to say anything.

Mike clears his throat and says, “Okay, last but not least…” He holds in the palm of his hand a bit of felted wool in the rough approximation of a sheep. It’s clearly old. “My uncle made this for me when I moved in with him after my parents died. I called him… Sheepy. I was not creative.” He huffs a laugh. “And I… I dunno. Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing with all of this. I have family in Charlotte. I thought about moving there… Maybe I will one day. Or somewhere else. I haven’t seen them in years, anyway. I decided to stay in Derry even after my uncle died, even after I sold the farm, and there’s been something really isolating about all of it. I love you guys, you know that, but maybe I don’t know how else to be now.”

He drops Sheepy into the flames and takes a step back. Bill pats his shoulder firmly. 

“Well, this was kind of a downer,” Richie mutters. “Is that it? What happens now?”

In answer, there’s a sudden _whoosh_ of air high in the cavern above them. Three orbiting balls of light descend toward them, bathing the underground space in light and casting swirling shadows. 

“Don’t look at the light!” Mike yells at them and they all obey, looking at the ground and at each others’ faces. Mike frantically reminds them of the next couple steps— _hold hands and chant, repeat after me, ‘turn light into dark’_ —and the Losers follow without question. 

Richie closes his eyes, grips Eddie’s hand on one side and Stan’s on the other. The light grows brighter through his eyelids. Their chanting grows out of sync with each other. Wind swirls around them, ruffling Richie’s hair. He keeps his eyes closed tight.

It comes to a crescendo, the light and sound and wind, and then it’s over. It’s still and quiet and pitch black beyond Richie’s eyelids. He blinks a few times but there’s no difference in vision between his eyes open and shut. The darkness seems to have a gravity of its own, heavy and thick. For a moment he’s worried he’s gone blind. At least they’re still holding hands otherwise Richie would feel completely untethered. His palms are sweaty; he grabs Eddie’s tighter, and Eddie squeezes back. 

Then Bill breaks the silence and the tension. It had only been a second or two but felt much longer. “I– I guess Sss-Stan was right about the light. It’s gone, now it’s dark in here.” 

“Really dark,” Mike agrees quietly. “Who has a flashlight handy?” 

“Here,” Eddie says. He pulls his hand away to click on his headlamp. 

Richie pulls his other hand from Stan’s grip and rubs his sweaty palms on his jeans. 

There’s enough light from Eddie’s headlamp to see the empty basket in the middle of their circle and the other Losers’ faces. Their relieved and hesitantly hopeful expressions. 

“Did that work?” Richie asks. 

Mike crouches forward to inspect the basket, where the fire has been snuffed out. 

Eddie turns his face up then, redirecting the focused beam of white light. It shines just beyond where they’re standing onto the jagged stalagmites and behind them—it illuminates a pale, grinning face that seems to be around twelve feet off the ground. 

Richie sees it in the second before Eddie shouts and stumbles back; the beam of light is now aimed up toward the ceiling, filtering out into nothingness before it touches another surface. 

“What? What?” Bill shouts as everyone scrambles around, grabbing at each other and fumbling with their flashlights, trying to see what Eddie saw. 

“What the fuck was that?!” Richie yells even though he knows. He crouches down beside Eddie, where he’s tripped over a rock. Bev has her flashlight out, directing the beam wildly all over the cavern, and catching another glimmer of huge yellow eyes. “Was that–?”

“Turn off the lights,” Stan says firmly. “Turn off the–”

There’s a scream. Eddie turns his head in time to illuminate Bev as she flies off into the darkness, as if pulled, her arms reaching out toward them. Another scream and Ben follows, flying in the opposite direction, before engulfed in darkness. Their voices are distant. 

The remaining Losers are somehow distant, too, Richie realizes. Eddie was right by his side a second ago, but now Richie can’t reach him. He can’t find his flashlight.

“Eddie?” he calls out.

There’s a bright light, then nothing.

_Then the summer swell of cicadas, the heat of sun on the back of his neck. Richie opens his eyes._

_There’s a penknife gripped in his hand. His hand is smaller, slender and youthful, sun-blond hairs on the back of his fingers. He’s thirteen and crouched next to the wood railing of the Kissing Bridge. He’s just finished the final stroke of the E, and sits back to admire the large blocky initials, when he hears his name from behind him._

_“Richie?”_

_His stomach drops. He spins around, losing his balance slightly. His bare knee scuffs in the gravel._

_But it’s just Eddie. Simultaneously the worst person and best person to have caught Richie in the act. He stands there, his own bare knees adorned with healing pink scabs, a cast on his forearm. He looks at Richie, his eyebrows drawn in confusion._

_Richie doesn’t explain himself, but he knows Eddie knows. Eddie doesn’t ask for an explanation, either. He just shoves his hands in his pockets and asks Richie if he wants to go to the arcade. Richie says yes._

_Later, when they start high school, Eddie comes to Richie panicked one day and says he thinks he’s gay. Richie talks him through it rather candidly, making him laugh explosively a few times. By the end of it, Eddie’s shoulders have relaxed. The sky isn’t falling anymore, and more importantly, neither of them are alone in this. He sits next to Richie in the hammock, letting their legs knock together._

_The first time they kiss it’s just a kiss, shy and tentative. They’re each other’s first everything—only everything—and they take their time growing into themselves and into each other, getting used to being close._

_They keep it private for a while, until after they graduate. They move in together, as ‘friends’—roommates—as far as anyone else is concerned, but they hold the truth of their relationship between them, and Richie’s never been happier. When he has Eddie close, he doesn’t feel the need to yell to the rest of the world so much. They sleep on a mattress on the floor, without blankets in the summer, the ceiling fan stirring the humid night air._

_Soon after high school, they tell their friends, and they’re all good about it. They tease them in a way that aches with familiarity and love. ‘Of course it’s you two. Shoulda known.’_

_They tell Richie’s parents, eventually, but never Eddie’s mom. And that’s fine. She’s already angry enough that Richie is her son’s friend and roommate, and that feeds Eddie’s hunger for rebellion without making too much of a mess._

_Eventually they move to Portland. Eddie goes back to school to pursue a business degree. Richie works at the radio station. Richie brings home a stray cat one day and they discover that Eddie was never actually allergic. Richie cooks dinner most nights and Eddie does the dishes. They sleep in the same bed every night. Sometimes they hold hands in public. Eddie says, ‘I love you,’ before he hangs up the phone._

_Do you think you could have had it like this, Richie? If you weren’t such a coward? If you had just told him?_

_Well, maybe not._

_But there’s a part of you that still daydreams about this, as if you can go back twenty-seven years and start over._

_You don’t need things to be real, Richie, do you? You live in your safe fantasy world, and you never take any risks._

_And that’s fine. Why not stay here, Richie?_

_Stay here._

_You can do this forever._

With a jolt, Richie comes out of it. He sees Eddie before he hears him, his ears still ringing. ( _You don’t need things to be real_.) Richie lies on his back, the cold stone floor seeping up through his clothes, making him shiver. Eddie is patting his chest; the filthy patch of soaked gauze is taped to his cheek. ( _You never take any risks_.) Richie blinks up at him, everything moving too slowly. Eddie is saying his name and, “I think I got It, I think I killed it for real, Richie. Richie, wake up.” ( _You can do this forever_.) Eddie pats his face now, his fingers curling under his jaw. 

Richie weakly breathes his name, “Eddie,” and reaches for him, grabbing his arm. He tries to pull Eddie closer to him, clumsy but with force. 

Eddie loses his balance, falling to one side. “Whoa,” he mutters. “You okay? We should–” he turns around, looking beyond where Richie can see, at their friends. “We should move him–”

There’s a flash of light behind Eddie and then he cries out and falls against Richie. The momentum sends them tumbling over the edge; Richie holds on tight as they barrel roll down the rocks. Eddie swears a blue streak directly into his ear, mixing Richie’s name into his pained obscenities here and there. Richie can’t tell exactly what has happened but he feels the warm wetness spreading out from Eddie’s shoulder, soaking his clothes. He has a pretty good idea. 

Finally they come to a stop in a small cave, dark and sheltered. Richie scrambles to help Eddie upright. He groans at being moved, shaking his head in protest. 

“Shit, sorry, you gotta… sit up,” Richie says.

Eddie’s shirt is torn and bloodstained under his armpit, dripping all the way to the hem. He puts up less resistance now while Richie lifts him to sit propped up against the wall, just enough to get eyes on the gash on the back of his shoulder. Not sure what else to do, Richie rips off his own jacket and wraps it around him, applying pressure the best he can. 

Eddie hisses in reaction. The bandage on his cheek wrinkles over his contorted face. 

“God,” Richie mutters, trying to smile. “Can’t you stay out of harm’s way for two minutes?” 

Eddie apologizes weakly, and Richie’s heart splinters. 

“Eddie,” he whispers. They’re alone right now, and everything still feels a little less than real and he needs to say it. “I’m sorry I said I wish I left Derry. That’s not true. I never could’ve… I never wanted to go anywhere without you. I stayed because you stayed. I mean, all of us, but… don’t tell the others, but… really it was you, it was always you.” 

“Richie, I…” Eddie winces and trails off, breathing hard. 

“It’s fine, Eddie, don’t speak,” Richie says. “Just stay with me, okay? Listen to me.” 

Eddie nods and doesn’t try to say anything else.

The rest of the Losers stumble into the cave after them, out of breath but uninjured. 

“Oh my god,” Bev gasps when she sees them. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Richie says firmly. “We gotta get him out of here.” 

“How?” Stan asks. “Richie, the only way out is…” He nods toward the mouth of the cave. “Through.” 

It’s dark and quiet beyond the small opening to the main cavern, but that is not reassuring. The opposite in fact.

Richie is still pressing onto Eddie’s shoulder, clamping his hands on the front and back as if holding him together. Eddie’s face is pale; he sucks rhythmic breaths through his teeth. Mike crowds in on them to help.

“Maybe we can… have a distraction?” Ben brainstorms behind them. “We could lure It away and they could… run Eddie past?” 

“I think that’s likely to get the rest of us killed,” Stan points out. “I don’t know how much of a shot we actually have, but I think our chances are higher together.” 

“That’s not–” Bill starts, sighing. “Stan, don’t say that, that’s not helpful–”

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” Bev says. “He’s not wrong. If we split up, whoever stays behind…” 

Eddie starts trying to speak again, his voice rasping up his throat. Richie instinctually shushes him, but he doesn’t stop. 

“We saw It… before,” Eddie manages. “Park. R’member?” 

Richie blinks a few times before it dawns on him. He says to the rest of the group that has gathered round, “Yeah, Eddie and I were… trying to have a serious conversation earlier and the clown popped up, and I just started yelling at it, like ‘shut the fuck up, asshole,’ and it… did?” Richie shrugs, and looks at Eddie who nods to confirm that that’s what he meant. 

“It can’t be that easy,” Stan says skeptically. 

“I dunno,” Richie says. “It worked.” 

The rest of the Losers exchange glances that clearly translate to: we have no better ideas. 

“Let’s try it, I guess,” Bill says, speaking for the group. 

Richie takes it upon himself to get the ball rolling. He turns from Eddie and yells into the void, “Hey, fuckface!”


	4. Chapter 4

Later the Losers will look back on it and joke that it came naturally to them, bullying the clown to death. After all, they’ve been practicing the art of a good insult with each other for the past few decades. They had been bullied as children, which teaches you a thing or two about cruelty, and then were stuck growing up in the same town as their tormentors. In most cases, this only reinforced the fact that the bullies were even bigger losers than they were. As adults, the playing field evened pretty quick, and they had no qualms about cursing out and refusing service to anyone they hated who dared step foot in the bar. 

As much as the Losers learned selective silence as a survival skill, they also learned that as a group they were unfuckwithable. Their parents and teachers may have told them not to fight back since it only encourages the bullies, but that’s bad advice at least half of the time. And the equation changes a lot once you have a few more bodies on the ‘fighting back’ side. 

All this to say, the Losers are downright artistic in the verbal abuse they hurl at their biggest childhood tormenter. There are obscenities, yes, but it goes far beyond the obvious. Mike points out that It is nothing but a parasite who only has the power its victims give it. Bev shouts about how pathetic It is for preying on children; maybe too afraid to take on something its own size? Huh? Richie has a prepared tirade about how the clown shtick is, honestly, a little tired and cliche. He’s been waiting to get that off his chest. Stan screams, “You live in a palace of literal shit!” 

Within minutes, It shrinks from a towering malevolent force to a pathetic shriveled thing. It really is that easy. 

But the celebration is short-lived because as It crumbles, so does its layer. They half-carry Eddie out through the collapsing tunnels; he’s still conscious but too weak from blood loss to be of much use. 

They load Eddie into the back of Richie’s car and Richie has to choose between driving—he’s the only person he trusts to drive fast enough for the life-or-death stakes—and sitting in the back with Eddie to comfort him and apply even pressure to his wound. After a moment of deliberation, Richie gets behind the wheel, entrusting Stan to tend to Eddie in the backseat. 

Eddie is in surgery for two hours. They clean up the bone fragments in his shoulder and repair the damaged tissue. He gets a blood transfusion. They put him on an antibiotic course. They scold Eddie for the sewing needle botch job, and give him a couple real stitches. 

Richie is the first of the Losers to see Eddie. He refused to leave the hospital, instead pacing the waiting room and washing up in the bathroom sink. He gave Bev his keys and she brings him a change of clothes. He stuffs his sewer-ruined clothes into the trash. Then he goes to see Eddie. 

Eddie looks pretty good, all things considered. He seems tiny in his hospital bed, but he also looks pissed off, which is pleasantly grounding. All is right in the world if Eddie Kaspbrak is a bit annoyed. His right arm is in a sling, supporting his bandaged shoulder. When Richie walks into the room, Eddie immediately waves him over. 

“Shut the door,” he says, and Richie happily obliges. “This fucking hospital,” he goes on, rolling his eyes, as Richie slides into the seat next to his bedside. “I’m surprised they didn’t kill me. And I can’t believe you took me to St. Joseph’s. I’m going to be paying this off for the rest of my fucking life.” 

Richie just smiles. A few tears of relief spring to his eyes unbidden. “Yeah, I hope so.” 

Eddie glances at him and his expression softens by a degree. He re-arranges his hands in his lap, taking care to avoid tangling his IV line. “Hey, Richie,” he says quietly while he picks at a piece of lint on the bedspread. “What you said… I wanted to say… Me too.” 

“Me too?” Richie repeats. “What the hell does that mean? What do they have you on?” 

“You said you stayed in Derry for me,” Eddie says, pushing right past Richie’s weak joke. He licks his dry, pale lips, and glances at Richie again, a brief moment of eye contact and then back to his lap. “I’m saying: me too.” 

After a moment of stunned silence Richie breaths a quiet wrecked laugh. “So are we just idiots? We both could’ve left, then.” 

Eddie smiles. “Yeah, we should’ve. Fuck everyone else.” 

Richie smiles back and he acts on the impulse to grab Eddie’s hand where it rests on his lap. Eddie turns his hand over to knit his fingers with Richie’s. They sit like that for a while, holding hands, while Richie helps fill in the gaps in Eddie’s memory. 

Later when he thinks back on this, after the rest of the Losers stop in to say hi and after Eddie falls asleep and after Richie goes home to shower and finally sleep himself, Richie isn’t quite sure what happened between them. It feels like an important step in a new direction, but he tries to remind himself: they’ve always been intense friends. They just had an exceedingly intense experience. Besides, Eddie was pretty doped up. 

In the morning, Richie wakes up to someone pounding on his door. He startles awake and grapples for his phone on the nightstand to discover that it’s almost noon. Regardless, he stumbles out of bed ready to throttle whoever is on the other side. 

It’s his friends. He doesn’t play favorites and a promise is a promise so he grumbles, “I was fucking sleeping.”

But then Bev holds up a to-go bag from the diner down the street so Richie puts his murderous intentions aside for a moment. The five of them shoulder their way into his apartment. Apart from the styrofoam clamshells full of hashbrowns, scrambled eggs and bacon, Bill is carrying a half-gallon of bleach. Stan is wearing rubber gloves. Ben hands Richie a paper cup of watery diner coffee and Richie accepts, nodding a wordless thanks.

“We’re, uh.” Stan nods toward the bathroom. “We didn’t clean very thoroughly yesterday.” 

“Yeah, go for it,” Richie mumbles. He collapses at the kitchen table to eat. Ben and Bev sit with him, sipping their own coffees.

“Eddie seemed good,” Bev says. 

Richie nods. “Yeah, he’s a tough one.”

“Do you think it… feels different?” Ben asks quietly. “This time?”

Richie hasn’t yet given much thought to his feeling outside of the immediate almost-tragedy of Eddie. He remembers learning of Adrian’s death, barely more than twenty-four hours ago, a lifetime ago. Maybe they should have done something sooner. 

“I can’t tell,” Richie mutters. “D’you think we have to stick around for another twenty-seven years, just in case?” 

Ben and Bev exchange a glance that seems meaningful. Bev says, “Maybe. Or maybe we can fly the coop for a while, and come back to Derry to retire.” 

Richie snorts humorlessly. “If you think any of us are gonna be rich enough to retire at sixty-seven, you’re fucking delusional.” He digs into the congealed diner eggs. His hands are shaking a little but he doesn’t know why. 

When the cleaning crew leaves the bathroom a few minutes later, they stuff a few rags into the garbage and wash their hands at the sink before joining the rest of the Losers at the table. 

“So…” Richie starts, looking between Mike, Bill and Stan. “Can you finally tell me what you did with Bowers?”

The three of them exchange a look, smirking as if this is the world’s most morbid inside joke. “Quarry,” Mike finally says. 

Richie’s jaw drops a little, picturing Bowers’ wrapped up corpse taking that final plunge. 

“Chicken wire to cut the bloating,” Bill says matter-of-factly. “Rocks in the bag to prevent floating.”

“Holy shit,” Richie says. “So we’re never going swimming again.” 

Mike scoffs. “As if this is the first time someone’s disposed of a body in the quarry…”

Eddie comes home a couple days later. Richie helps him up the stairs with a hand hovering over his back and carries his bag for him. Once inside, Eddie goes to rest on the couch, and Richie settles on the other end, watching him carefully. Eddie wears a tight fitted polyester t-shirt under his sling—the type of shirt he wears to work out, but it’s good for his bandages to wick sweat away—and terrycloth sweatpants.

“You good?” Richie asks him. 

“Pretty good.” Eddie shifts against the cushions and winces. 

“Your shoulder hurts?” Richie asks. “Do you need some pain meds? Are you taking enough?” He starts reaching for Eddie’s duffel bag that sits on the floor between them. 

“Yeah, Richie, stop,” Eddie says. “I’m fine. I don’t want… I want a clear head right now.” 

Richie stares at him. Eddie makes some expression, a slight raise of his eyebrows, that must mean something. “Why?” Richie asks. 

“Because… Richie… What do you mean, why?” Eddie seems frustrated now, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “We’re home now, for the first time since… and…” He makes that face again. A microscopic eyebrow raise and a slight head nod. 

Richie just stares blankly. 

“Fine, okay,” Eddie says, his face dropping. “Can we at least talk then?” 

“Sure. What do you want to talk about?” 

“Are you seriously being like this?” Eddie snaps. “Holy shit.” 

“Like what?” Richie asks incredulously, the pitch of his voice shooting up. “Why are you yelling at me? I’m literally just asking–”

“Okay, shit, sorry,” Eddie interrupts, waving his hand. “Um. I realize I’ve probably been acting insane. And not just recently, but for, like—oh, I dunno—forty years?” 

Richie snorts. 

“And not to be a fucking cliche,” Eddie continues, “but almost dying, I guess it made me re-evaluate some things. And what you said to me… I mean, that was pretty intense, Richie. And I meant what I said, how I feel about you.” 

Richie’s pulse pounds in his ears. “Which is…?” 

“You held my hand, asshole!” Eddie snaps. “Jesus, why are you always like this?”

Richie’s head is spinning from trying to follow Eddie’s conversation circles. “Always?” he echoes. 

“Yeah!” Eddie’s face is red now as he tries to explain. “After the last time, you totally acted like it didn’t mean anything.” 

“The last time?” 

“Yeah, when we…” Eddie makes a vague gesture and gives up. “The last time! You fucking know what I’m talking about.”

It clicks. “Eddie,” Richie says heavily, trying his best not to smile. “I’m sorry to, like… be crass about it, but. I sucked your dick. Like.” He makes a blowjob motion as if it needed further clarification, poking his tongue into his cheek. “I don’t know what was unclear about that.”

Eddie frowns deeply, his dimples popping into sharp relief. “I thought it was just sex to you, I guess? You’ve never really dated anyone for very long. Besides, you know, your series of fake girlfriends in your twenties–” 

“Hey, what Stephanie from Bangor and I had was very real!” 

“And I guess I thought that what I felt for you was only sexual, too,” Eddie says. “Like, you’re my friend who I want to fuck, that’s fine.” (Richie chokes on his own spit a little.) “Those two feelings can be neatly compartmentalized. No cross-contamination.” 

Richie coughs to clear his throat, unfortunately missing the cute one-handed gestures Eddie is making of neat, separated boxes. “You want to fuck me?” Richie rasps. 

“Yes,” Eddie says like it’s obvious. He waves his hand in a way that clearly reads as ‘keep up’ and Richie almost vaporizes. “But I think what I realized, when you said all of that to me, and when you held my hand, was those aren’t separate feelings. The way I love you, as one of my oldest friends, and the way I, um…” He stumbles a little but keeps going. “The way I’m attracted to you, it’s one feeling. And trying to surgically separate them, and remove the sexual feelings, and try to keep it platonic, I think that was… detrimental.” He stares at Richie, his mouth pressed into a thin determined line. 

“Oh, holy shit,” Richie says, a little stunned. “Did you practice that?”

“Fuck you,” Eddie spits, his cheeks splotchy red. 

He looks angry, for real, but Richie just laughs in surprise, giddy and breathless. “Yeah, fuck me. You said that. A couple times.”

“You are literally such an asshole,” Eddie says. “I don’t know why I even–”

“No, no, hey, Eddie.” Richie leans toward him, and Eddie goes quiet and still, until Richie pulls him into a hug, their faces slotted side by side, chins on each other’s shoulders, chests pressed together. It’s a perfect fit, Richie thinks, beyond all hope. He keeps holding him, rubbing his back a little. “Let me know if I’m hurting your shoulder.” 

“You’re fine,” Eddie squeaks out. 

“Okay, um,” Richie starts, staring at the wall with determination. “I think I owe this to you, even though it’s really embarrassing, so I’m gonna say it.” Eddie’s holding his breath, Richie realizes, the rise and fall of his chest having ceased. “I’ve been in love with you for thirty years.”

Just saying it out loud to another person for the first time brings tears to his eyes. It feels like ripping off a scab before it fully heals; the blood pools to the surface again. 

There were a series of realizations when it came to Eddie and each one felt like a fresh wound or something destabilizing. Like Richie was a Jenga tower and each time he realized his feelings for Eddie and admitted them to himself it was another block removed, a step closer to total collapse. 

He was quite young, twelve or thirteen, when he realized that what he felt for Eddie was strong and special but not necessarily unique. He felt a diluted dose of what he felt for Eddie for a few other boys in his class, or a son of his father’s friend who he used to play with. He let himself consider at the time that what he felt for Eddie might be love. It didn’t scare him at first. He was happy to keep it inside, tend to it. It didn’t scare him until he realized that even if he did his best to hide it, other people could still sense it. That’s when it began to feel like something outside of his control, something that he wanted cut out of him.

He couldn’t cut it out, not for lack of trying. So instead he buried it deeper, far enough that he tricked himself into thinking it wasn’t there anymore. He spent his older teen years and early twenties convinced that he was not in love with Eddie. 

The next time Richie really confronted those feelings was after Eddie was married and it became too painful to not deal with. It was akin to walking around with his arm cut off. He was losing blood, fast, and ignoring it was not going to help anymore. He had to cauterize the wound. Trade excruciating short-term pain for the long-term ache of healed-over skin. So, there were a few nights in his mid-twenties when he let himself really wallow, for the first time since middle school. He hand-wrote the entire history of their relationship on scraps of notebook paper, sobbing through portions of it. 

_I remember when we first met_ , he wrote. _It was in Miss Donovan’s third grade class, and I looked at you and I thought you were tiny, and you seemed nervous. I thought that I wanted to be your friend. I always just wanted to make you laugh._

 _I remember one afternoon when we were seventeen_ , he wrote. _You were playing my guitar in my parents’ basement. We were sitting on the floor, and you looked up and smiled at me and I wanted to kiss you. God, I never wanted to kiss you so bad. I swear I almost did. If there was ever a moment, that was it._

_When you started dating Greta, I thought I was going to die. I tried so hard to not be jealous, but I can’t do it, Eds. I don’t know how to stop feeling like this._

_I’m not sure if I can be around you much longer, for my own sake. This is killing me._

_I’m afraid I’m never going to be able to love anyone else. You’ve taken everything I have to give._

Then he shredded up the handwritten papers and sobbed until he was empty. 

Later on, Richie realized that his dramatics didn’t even work. He wasn’t able to cut out the tumor of his feelings. It had metastasized, spreading into his bloodstream and every cell of his body. But as he got older, as his twenties turned into his thirties, it became a duller ache, like an old broken bone that never properly healed, and it acted up now and then. There were bad days, but he could live with it. 

Now, Richie takes a wet, shaky breath and goes on. “There were periods of time when I tricked myself into thinking I was over it, but I never was. I’m still not.”

Eddie lets his breath out in a rush, melting against Richie as his body relaxes. Richie feels the muscles in his back move; his sling arm twitches against Richie’s torso and he mutters, “Ouch,” quietly, but makes no move to pull back. The fingers of his free hand grip the hem of Richie’s t-shirt, fierce.

“We can stop hugging,” Richie suggests, still clinging to him. “This is just a ploy so I didn’t have to look you in the eye while I said that.”

“Richie,” Eddie says, gently. 

Then his hand slides up Richie’s back to cradle the back of his head at the same time that he pulls back from the embrace just far enough to kiss Richie. 

Richie exhales into it, surprised and relieved and heart-crushingly happy; Eddie’s eyes are closed, but Richie is greedy and wants to get used to seeing his face up close, so he keeps his eyes open a sliver. He looks at the spread of his eyelashes, the dusting of freckles over his cheeks, the pores of his nose. His strong eyebrows, just a tad unruly, a couple wiry flyaway hairs meeting in the middle above his nose, and spreading out on his temples toward his hairline. 

Eddie has such a nice hairline, which is one of those weirdly specific things that Richie found himself staring at over the years, with a confusing mix of fondness and lust. Richie himself has a tall sloping forehead, a weak and retreating hairline that he hides by keeping his hair on the long side. But Eddie has one of those small, neat rectangular foreheads, with a hairline like a thicket of trees. Richie wants to run his thumb along it, or kiss it, or lick it. Richie’s kind of a weird, fucked-up guy, a grab-bag of inexplicable desires, but that’s the expected result of wallowing in his own aimless longing for so many years. He never got bored of Eddie because he found so many little things to obsess over. 

Soon, hopefully, Richie will be able to touch Eddie’s forehead—or kiss it or lick it—but for now, he’s kissing Eddie’s mouth, which is better than he ever could have realistically hoped for, anyway. Eddie’s mouth is small; his thin lips, strengthened from frowning, move against Richie’s in hesitant little presses. Then Eddie tilts his head, nose nudging farther against Richie’s glasses, and slips him the tiniest, most polite bit of tongue. Richie responds by, basically, unhinging his own jaw and sliding his tongue past Eddie’s and into his mouth, coaxing his teeth farther apart. 

“Ow, fuck,” Eddie mutters, pulling back. His hand is over his patched-up cheek, but he’s smiling a little, flushed pink and glowing. “Watch it.”

“Shit, sorry,” Richie mutters, without much remorse. He presses an open-mouthed kiss to Eddie’s jaw, and then keeps going down his neck. He’s sloppily shaved from the hospital stay; coarse stray hairs poke against Richie’s lips and tongue. Eddie’s good hand winds into his hair, pulling; Richie groans and clutches the small of Eddie’s back, licking and biting at the hollow of his throat. 

“I’m sort of useless right now,” Eddie says with a chuckle. His breath has picked up, panting slightly. The sound alone sets Richie on fire. “Right hand is fucked, and I can’t open my mouth very wide without popping stitches.” 

“Holy fuck,” Richie breathes, the implications of _that_ statement ricocheting around his brain like it’s a pinball machine. 

“Yeah, so, um,” Eddie says. “I’m sorry in advance.”

“No, don’t apologize. Are you kidding? This is already so beyond anything that I… Um.” Richie swallows. “What do you want me to do?”

Eddie thinks about it for a moment, looking at him. Richie feels his skin prickle with goosebumps under the scrutiny. “Um, here,” he says, shoving at Richie’s shoulder until he turns to sit flat against the backrest. Eddie follows him, climbing into his lap. He throws his good arm around Richie’s neck, peering down at him, smiling shyly. Then he rolls his hips forward and down, grinding against Richie’s erection and rubbing his own against his stomach. “Good?” he asks, grinning. 

Richie must look blissed out and completely stupid. He nods and lurches forward to latch his open mouth onto Eddie’s collarbone like a lamprey. Both his hands find Eddie’s ass, following and encouraging his movements. Eddie has a great ass, which Richie had known from seeing it in jeans and running shorts, but feeling it is something else. He’s so tight and firm, lean muscle everywhere. 

“This is nuts,” Richie mumbles, breathing in the sharp, saltwater smell of him. “Like a triage tent lap dance.”

Eddie snorts then giggles, the joke hitting him in two stages. “You’re such an idiot,” he says (there’s the third stage), still clumsily circling his hips in Richie’s lap. He breaks the pattern every few seconds to rut against Richie’s stomach, wrinkling his shirt. What Eddie lacks in grace, he makes up for in enthusiasm. 

“The, uh, sling and stitches,” Richie says, reaching to cradle his jaw, thumbing at the yellowed edge of his healing bruise. “Really doing it for me.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “No, they’re not.”

“Okay, fine,” Richie cedes. “Maybe the medical accessories are not my thing currently, but this is gonna rewire my brain and I’ll come out of this with a shiny new kink. You’re like a fucking dream right now.”

Eddie’s face gets a little funny at that and then—it must have been the magic words because he sits back against Richie’s knees and starts fumbling at the fly of Richie’s jeans. One-handed, he doesn’t even manage to pop the button. 

“Oh, fuck,” Richie says with a breathy laugh. “I wonder if, um. I mean. The sling could be, like, a form of bondage. That’s pretty hot.”

“Take your pants off, jackass,” Eddie says. 

So Richie shuts up and does as he’s told, wiggling under Eddie until he manages to slide his pants down around his knees. Richie tenses in anticipation of Eddie seeing him, Eddie who he’s sure has never been this up close and personal with another man’s dick before. After a moment of round-eyed staring—which is excruciating, every inch of Richie’s skin flushing with waves of hot and cold prickles—Eddie takes Richie’s cock in a tentative, left-handed grip. He squeezes a little and begins to move. Richie focuses on the feeling of the ground beneath his feet so he won’t float away. 

“This feels really good,” Eddie says. “You’re so big.”

Richie’s eyes sort of roll back into his head at that, even though Eddie says it so matter-of-factly. Maybe sensing his reaction, Eddie keeps talking, leaning in closer to Richie’s ear. 

“I hoped you would be. I mean, I sort of knew, I guess. You’re tall, and I’ve been checking you out in your sweatpants and boxers for years, and that one time, I could feel it. I should’ve touched you then. I really wish I had.”

“Eddie,” Richie pleads quietly, leaning forward to rest his forehead on Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie’s hand has become more sure in its motion, but the grip is still teasingly light. 

“I’m gonna make up for it, Richie,” Eddie tells him. “I can’t wait to put you in my mouth or– or ride you.”

“Holy fuck,” Richie breathes, gripping fistfuls of Eddie’s shirt. He must tweak Eddie’s shoulder because Eddie makes a small noise of pain but he doesn’t stop stroking him, slow and steady, and Richie wants him to pick up the pace, but he also wants to let Eddie do this for an hour until he’s shaking and sobbing. “That’s something you, uh… want?” Richie asks him. 

“Yeah, want this inside me.”

“Jesus Christ, Eddie,” Richie gasps. 

He can hear Eddie’s smile in his voice when he says, “Yeah, can’t wait for you to fuck me.”

“Have you done, uh, anything… like that… before?” God, Richie’s really been reduced to a stammering mess. He can barely string a sentence together. 

“No,” Eddie answers. “I’ve fingered myself, but never… I wanna try it.”

That sounds about right. Eddie definitely does not own a dildo, unless he’s kept it in a storage locker or a top-secret bank vault somewhere. There is not a dildo anywhere on the premises, that much Richie is sure. Because, yes, he has snooped through every inch of Eddie’s personal space over the past few years, which he’s not proud of, and he’ll confess to it someday when he feels more secure about things between the two of them, but– that’s not really the issue here. 

The issue is that he probably can’t fuck Eddie _right_ now, since it’d be his first time trying anything like it. Not with his shoulder all messed up, and the fact that they’ve just come home from the hospital, and he’s slightly loopy from pain meds. And the fact that Richie’s going to be lucky to last even three more minutes at this rate, just from the slight, steady pressure of Eddie’s warm, dry palm. 

“Okay, okay,” Richie says, abruptly rearing his head back and reaching for Eddie’s waistband. “Let’s get these off.” Eddie stands up in front of Richie and helps with one hand to get his sweat pants and boxer-briefs rolled down his thighs. 

Eddie’s long, pretty dick springs free, standing up from his dark pubic hair and curved up to his stomach. Richie’s mouth starts watering. Eddie tugs one ankle free of his pants, giving him enough range of motion to straddle Richie again. He’s still wearing the fitted, polyester t-shirt under his sling, his nipples budding through the fabric. Biting his lower lip, he slots his dick next to Richie’s, holding them together with one hand, and he starts to move again, rocking his hips forward. The first drag of friction makes them both hiss. Then Eddie spreads enough precome to get a smooth glide, and he works up a rhythm.

“This what you want?” Richie asks, circling his larger hand around the both of them, and thumbing at Eddie’s slit. He watches, entranced, as the pink head of Eddie’s cock pops through the ring of his fingers over and over. “You wanna come like this? Or you want me to blow you?”

“No, like this,” Eddie says, panting from effort as he moves in Richie’s lap. 

And that’s fine. Either way is fine. He likes that Eddie wants to work for it, he likes the rhythm of his heavy breathing and the way he bites his lip and narrows his eyes. It’s endearing—and hot as hell—especially when he grips Richie’s shoulder for leverage. 

“Richie, take off your shirt,” he says then, looking down at him with burning eye contact. 

Richie mutters, “Your wish is my command,” before he can stop himself. That was pretty stupid and cheesy and all too revealing, but Eddie only laughs a little, as he leans back to give Richie space to wrestle off his t-shirt. 

Once Richie has chucked the wrinkled garment across the room, Eddie burrows into his chest, one arm thrown over his shoulder and stays there, leaving Richie to blindly jerk them off between their bodies. He strokes the back of Eddie’s head with his other hand, and Eddie whispers, “Richie, Richie, Richie,” as he gets closer, hips thrusting. 

“Yeah, come on,” Richie encourages. “That’s it.” 

Eddie comes with a beautiful little moan that Richie feels in his chest, forming a lump in his throat. He spills hot into Richie’s hand.

“Richie, you too, come on,” Eddie says without missing a beat, snaking his hand between them to coax Richie to keep going. 

Richie does, his grip now filthily slick with Eddie’s come, and he starts to feel totally overwhelmed, and a little frightened, at the concept of letting go like this in front of Eddie. But Eddie just clings to him, pressing his lips to his neck and shoulder; he doesn’t sit back to look at Richie’s face. So this is easier. Richie closes his eyes and grips Eddie’s back with his left hand, pulling him closer against him. Eddie gasps and Richie immediately loosens his arm, worried he was too rough. But Eddie only shakes his head and leans against him. “’S fine.”

Richie doesn’t realize he’s making small, punched-out noises until Eddie comments on them.

“Love those sounds, Rich,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to the shell of Richie’s ear. “Beautiful. You’re almost there.” 

With an involuntary whine, the wave overtakes him and Richie comes. Incredibly, Eddie’s hand leaves Richie’s shoulder to go between them, entwining with Richie’s, stroking through the aftershocks. While Richie is still jelly-limbed and prone beneath him, Eddie sits back on his knees and looks thoughtfully at his own slick fingers. He pops his index finger into his mouth, only up to the first knuckle, and sucks lightly. 

Richie groans, dropping his head back against the cushion. “Oh, god, what the hell, Eddie? I _just_ came.” 

Eddie grins wickedly and licks a second finger. It can’t be merely curiosity at this point, but instead a pre-meditated scheme to annihilate Richie from the dick up. He stops with the fingers at that point, instead planting his messy hand on Richie’s shoulder and leaning forward to give him a sloppy, sticky kiss. 

Richie licks back, lazily, and opens his mouth for Eddie’s exploration. Eventually, they shift down on the couch, finding a position comfortable for Eddie’s injured arm. He lies half on top of Richie, their naked legs intertwined. Richie strokes absently at his hip bone. 

“Are you falling asleep?” Richie asks him after a minute, nudging him slightly with care not to bump his shoulder. “I guess we could move to the bed.” But he loves the weight of Eddie on top of him. Eddie is solid and warm, heavier than one would expect from his size. He’s dense, all bone and muscle. 

Eddie hums and nestles back against him. “Why me?” 

Richie tenses. “What?”

“I just– thirty years? Why me? You’re cool and confident and everyone likes you–”

Richie’s heart drops at the melancholy tone of Eddie’s voice. He interrupts him. “That could not be farther from the truth–”

“And… me?” Eddie says with a rueful laugh. “Fucking loser with fake asthma who couldn’t even figure out he was gay so he married the girl who bullied him in middle school? I let people walk all over me–”

“No you don’t–”

“And I’m too scared to let myself do what I want, or even to feel my feelings, so I make up all these insane self-punishments, and–”

“Eddie, shut up.” Richie twists around, wanting to look him in the eye, and Eddie grunts in pain, sitting up on the couch and cradling his shoulder. He scowls at Richie. Richie catalogues it as: _the first time Eddie scowled at me while I was completely naked_. A memorable occasion, to be sure. Hopefully one that will be repeated many, many times. “You do not let people walk all over you. Are you kidding? This coming from the guy who gives me shit every day of my life–”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “That’s different because that’s _you_.”

“–and who used to mouth off to bullies all the time, and who stood up to his mother, and who divorced Greta, and who killed Bowers–”

Eddie shushes him, as if their apartment is bugged by the FBI or something, reaching forward to smoosh his hand against Richie’s lips. Richie licks his palm in retaliation but Eddie just smirks at him. “You think that’s gonna work now? Ten minutes ago, I was eating your cum and you think that you can gross me out by licking me?” He throws his head back and laughs like a supervillain. 

Richie laughs too, snorting, his shoulders shaking the cushions beneath him. He bats Eddie’s hand away. “Jesus. You’re a monster.”

Eddie smiles down at him, crooked because of his fucked up cheek. His hair is a total mess. He’s still wearing his breathable polyester shirt that’s shifted under his sling, the left seam at his bellybutton now, and nothing on the bottom. 

Richie smiles up at him, painfully fond. “This is why I love you,” he says quietly. Eddie’s smile fades into something calmer, with a tinge of sadness, and Richie keeps talking. “You _are_ brave, but that’s not why. I love you because you’re a fucking weirdo and we have fun together and you give me shit, and I need that, you know? You can keep up with me. We know each other so well, and it’s been a fucking privilege to know you all these years. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.”

“Jesus,” Eddie mutters, seeming a little annoyed in the face of Richie’s sincerity. But there are tears in his eyes. “You always make me out to be way more interesting than I am.”

“Maybe,” Richie concedes. “But you’re the most interesting person in the world to me.”

“Ugh,” Eddie groans, covering his face with one hand. “I feel like I don’t deserve this.”

Richie snorts. “As if I’m such a catch. I’ve been obsessed with you since we were in middle school. How is that not a turn-off?”

“Richie.” Eddie lightly slaps his chest which makes Richie’s pulse jump. Then he leaves his hand resting on one of Richie’s pecs, fingers pressing into the plush layer of fat and brushing over his dark chest hair. He thumbs absently at one nipple while he speaks. “You’re the smartest person I know. You never had to study in school, you just understood everything, and that drove me crazy, but you were good at explaining stuff and you were never arrogant about it. You’re really kind to your friends even though you– Hey, stop that, don’t roll your eyes –even though you pretend you’re not. You’re funny and you always make me feel better and I never get tired of being around you. So I love you and you better quit your whining about not being good enough for me, I’ll kick your ass.”

Richie grins. He has tears in his eyes again. “Right back at ya, Eds.”

Eddie leans down to kiss him, but in doing so he places his entire bodyweight on Richie’s ribcage, digging in with his left hand. When Richie grunts, “Fucking _ow_ ,” Eddie pulls back too quickly and loses his balance, falling forward on top of him. 

He laughs against Richie’s ear and says, “Can’t wait to get both my arms back.” 

“Yeah, I won’t know what hit me, huh?”

“I meant for, like, my general mobility but sure, Richie. I’m gonna fuck you up.”

“Mm, yeah you are.” Richie takes his face in both hands and kisses him slowly, openly. When he pulls back, he slides his arms around Eddie’s waist. Eddie’s straddling him again, his dick resting against Richie’s belly. If he shifts just a bit backward, his ass will brush against Richie’s dick, which is perking up again from the overwhelmingly stimulating image of Eddie above him. “Bed?” Richie asks, still holding Eddie around his waist. 

Eddie quirks an eyebrow. “What, are you gonna carry me?”

“No, your legs work, don’t they?” Richie playfully slaps his ass and Eddie jolts a little, then visibly flushes. “Besides, you’re fucking heavy.”

“Fine,” Eddie mutters, making quite the effort to appear put-out. He climbs off of Richie and leads the way down the hallway to Richie’s bedroom. “I guess we don’t need both bedrooms anymore,” he remarks casually as he passes his own door. He sits on the edge of Richie’s mattress like he owns it, sighing with effort as he settles down. 

Richie’s cheeks are starting to ache from smiling. He crawls into bed after Eddie. 

“I wanna take this off,” Eddie says, tugging at the hem of his shirt and frowning.

Without being asked—verbally, anyway—Richie kneels behind him to start easing off the sling, taking care to keep Eddie’s arm in place. 

“What should we do with the second bedroom, then?” Richie asks him while he works, to distract Eddie from the discomfort. “We don’t need a guest room. All our friends and my parents already live in town. We don’t need a home office since we work at a bar.”

Eddie snorts. “Maybe, um… Home gym?”

“Fuck you,” Richie says fondly, helping to pull Eddie’s shirt off. “If you think I’m letting you bring a treadmill into my apartment…”

“Our apartment,” Eddie corrects.

“Mine first,” Richie says. “Name’s on the lease.”

Now Richie can see the bandages, wrapped around his shoulder, the purpling bruise and spiderwebbed capillaries that spread out around the injury. 

“Do you want to put the sling back on?”

Eddie stretches his shoulder carefully, hissing in pain, his eyes pinched shut. “No. Not right now. Thanks, Richie.”

He lays down carefully, holding his arm bent over his chest. Once he’s flat on the mattress, Richie settles down next to him, laying on his side. Richie leans forward to brush his lips to Eddie’s shoulder. 

“Nap time?”

“Yeah,” Eddie sighs. “God, I’m exhausted.”

“I wore you out,” Richie remarks with a grin.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Rich, it’s totally the handjobs that wore me out, and not the–” He cuts himself off with a yawn and doesn’t even seem to realize how hilarious that is. Richie laughs helplessly into his pillow. “–Not the back-to-back near-death experiences and the hospital stay and all the meds…”

His voice loses fire the longer he speaks. Richie smiles at him. “Okay, sure, Eds. Go to sleep.”

“Fine.” Eddie snaps his eyes shut. 

Richie wants to keep teasing him for being such a grump, for being the only person to have ever closed their eyes _defiantly_ , but he doesn’t. He says, “I’ll stay right here,” and nestles in, closing his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: [skeilig](https://skeilig.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [skeilig_](https://twitter.com/skeilig_)


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